Alternative Tech Progressing For Galactic War(v2 update)

>>EDIT<< V2.0

Ok I've been working on a hybrid tech tree that also incorporates the random card drops and I hope everyone likes it. Look at the new attached image for reference

First We keep the card system as is, this seems to be many peoples favorite part of the new system. As has been mentioned before many would like to have it so you can't receive useless tech that you can not use and I agree. You just need a bool (A true or false statement) for each card and only toggle the cards that you can use at the present.

So that makes it exactly like what we have now and the rest of the post will entail the new stuff. Each time you conquer a system you are given a technology. If you want you replace something you have for the not selected tech is then "decompiled" into a number of tech points. Now the tech tree has been moved to each card. Upgrading your cards with card unspent tech points can be used to unlock progressively increasing levels of improvements. Removing the cards that give you a arbitrary %. So you can upgrade your HP by 5% 10% 25% 50% and this allows you to tailor what you have to work with to your strategy. Your commander will be able to have his own tech tree where slots will also be upgradable with tech points. And your sub commanders will work the same as right now only that they to can be decomplied for more than average tech points.

The upgrades are for basic and advanced units. its just if you have basic aircraft you can improve them but if you get the adv aircraft those new units will take advantage of what you have improved already. And decompliling a tech will give you a part of those points already spent back.

Also taking a idea from the tread by @boylobster I have come to a idea of a death penalty. Every time you are defeated and have to re upload to a new body you will suffer data corruption. One of your data cards or even your commander can be given a deficiency to one of its attributes. So lets say you die, when you come back to the main menu you will see that something like your commanders toughness and your vehicle production speed has had a negative modifier attached to it. dieing repeatably will of course add to your level of corruption.

Of Course! that said when you make your game you should be able to select how bad dieing affects you along side of your difficulty setting. This is mealy a idea to add extra challenge to your play.

For the Ai factions I also think adding in a level of progression to keep pace with you would be important to have.

This system is one that I feel would make the most people happy. Its different and not too drastic of a change from what we have current. And really other than some UI and art work with some under the hood tweaks, would be a system that could be brought in "soon" (tm). Also to my knowledge this system would be unique to Planetary Affiliation and that to me is important.



><><><><><><><><><><><> Before EDIT v1.0
Hello, I am greatly enjoying the new galactic war. I do though have one big issue for it and that is the way that you acquire new technology. I love the Idea that you start off without access to every item in the game. However the method of gaining this at current is very problematic. The randomness is a nice idea but this method has a good number of draw backs like gaining the advance versions to units with out the basic prereqes.

I would like to do away with this and replace it with a more traditional Tech Tree. Instead of getting a new tech for every new system explored or conquered you instead get Tech Points to spend on unlocking new units/buildings/improvements. Included below is a first draft that I made suggesting the layout of this tree. Its more of a web actually as it really was the best way I could manage all the branching paths. There are a few things to point out on the graph. First you have the starting node and all starting technology in light blue. New tech will unlock and change color to visually show this. The large nodes are what I call tech gates. They just show where the advanced levels are and unlocking them usually unlocks a number of small nodes at the same time.

This is shown by the number at the bottom which are the tech points to open access to that item. Do note that this are just for demo and not meant to suggest how the technology's should priced. Also though shown in the key I did not include improvements as I could not locate a list of all of the current ones. That and I feel that they need to be reworked as well. This tech web will also allow for ramping bones' instead of having a item that increase build speed by 50% and at 50% the cost. you could buy into it and improve it over time.

If anyone could point me to a list I would be much obliged.

Also I think I got all the current items as the wiki is out of date and its hard to build everything over the course of a few playthoughs. I would like to offer this as a mod for testing but I am still a novice of file manipulation and really don't know how I would add a new feature to a server. Any one that would like to help me try this again I would be grateful.

So thoughts, suggestions, ideas?

very good but im a bit torn on the vote because galactic war is kind of about taking what your given and rolling with it, adapting your play style to your options. i still voted for the tech tree though, because i like having some control in what my army is going to be able to do.

I like the randomness... for the fir st few matches.

In my current GW, I got air and adv. air early with the Artillery loadout, which made them my only fighting units. Cue a dozen games of "rush t2" and bomber/peregrine blitz. No new toys like nukes,orbital or Halleys... just bot texh and econ boost to make my air rush easier.

A tech ladder would take out a lot the replayability, however. Tweaking the tech distribution would be a good step, but the randomness is valuable.

If a tech tree was implemented we could randomize the distribution of techs in the tree but what i would like to see is a basic to advanced requirement so you have to have the basic version of a tech before you find the advanced version

better temp fix: someone make a mix and match factions mod for gw. Just for now.

I like your idea, and the idea of making different galactic war game modes in general. You could award a different number of points for taking over a system depending on how many enemies you defeated, how long it took to do so etc. This would reward good performance. You could also do things like a random optional rule to follow for the next game (like not building a particular unit next game), if they do they get bonus points.

Ultimately, I play GW because I enjoy the randomness and the not knowing what is coming your way. However, the METHOD in which you get the random tech is inherently flawed because as of right now there is no reason for you, as the player, to switch up your tactics when playing the game. Why do that when all you need to do is spam out one set of units and scour the galaxy for subcommanders. Personally, I find the ideas brought up here:
https://forums.uberent.com/threads/how-to-prevent-a-galactic-bore.60359/
will add much more to the game than any tech tree. Uberent has already stated they are against tech trees and I agree with their sentiments. However, the upgrades for GW, in my mind, are supposed to serve as a tech tree without the tree component.

in conclusion, yes. As GW currently stands it is very flawed as a gametype because it fails in its one central goal which is to foster player ingenuity. Tech trees do the same thing as they remove replayability from the game type as you are pushed towards running down one part of the tech tree during every playthrough just because it fits your playstyle and you view it as "OP." This mentality could also ultimately break the fun out of the multiplayer component. However, some of the ideas stated in the link above could foster creativity WHILE STILL maintaining randomness, fun-ness, and balance (if implemented and tested well) into GW. Such are my thoughts. Take them or leave them.

The tech tree sounds very interesting, I like that idea.
Also having multiple different GW game modes would be a blast!

Concerning the bonus points, why not introduce a kind of bonus point system to buy techs/buffs you want?

Because I view this conflict as rather central to the core gameplay of GW and how the player should be able to interact with the PA universe / progress through each GW playthrough I have compiled a fairly comprehensive list of my thoughts on tech trees vs. randomized tech vs. semirandomized tech trees.

However, due to its length and the time necessary to proofread all of it I try to fix any spelling mistakes I have made in the morning after I get a good night's sleep. The link to the post with my compiled ideas will be posted as an edit on this post. Just thought I should give you a heads up in case this debate over how tech should behave in GW stirs your heart strings as much as it does mine.

The idea behind random is to propose a different way of doing things each time.
Make a tech tree, and you take away a lot of this.
- someone will think about the perfect tech tree unlock way, and everybody will use it
- you can mix a little the way of going, (this time i'll go air, this time bots...), but limited, you'll get bored of it after a few games

A random tech tre maybe ?

But Guys at Uber stated a lot of time that it is only the first "pass", so let's let them work

No. random tech trees take alot of the complexities of either complete randomness or complete tech tree out of the game without supplying a whole lot to the game to make it any better. Look at reviews of Pandora: First Contact for a second, third, etc. opinion

I seriously don't get the hate for that game other then the absolute fanatics who hate anything that isn't alpha centari, who will hate any attempt to recreate their precious game, for stupid reasons.

Sadly haven't found many reviews of the game, but the one i stumbled upon liked the randomised Tech Tree.
Could you provide me more details ?

Sorry. Can't provide you with my ideas right this second. In class :/. Ill edit this or repost and delete this in about an hour and a half or so with my reasonings

EDIT: can't find where to delete. If such a thing exists I would greatly appreciate it if you could let me know how to delete my posts 0.o

Before I begin, yes I am biased against the idea of a semi-random tech tree as I feel the idea of randomness can be better achieved through completely random tech, and the structure of a tech tree is more useful by... well... having a tech tree. Ultimately, in my view, the merging of these two ideas creates a hybrid which is somehow lesser than the sum of its parts. My promised response to some of the above statements is below:

WITHOUT FURTHER ADO: In a nutshell, I do not like the idea of a tech tree populated with individual technologies arranged in a random manner because it goes against the fundamental ideas of what a tech tree should be.

A tech tree should be able to lay out to the player a specific path to get from point A to point B in the tree so that players can weigh out the possible benefits and drawbacks of, say, going for tanks instead of going for bots. Having a semi-randomized tech tree (basically what is described at the top of this post) goes against this core idea of what a tech tree should be as the play has no idea what tech will be open to him/her next. For instance, I could go into a game wanting to build tanks. So i research a tank tech. However, the next random techs in my tree are both for fighters and bombers. Still wanting to play with tanks, I research these air upgrades. The next round of upgrades are some passives which only affect t2 bots, normally a late game tech but due to the random nature in which the tech tree is oriented, I unlock it fairly early in my GW playthrough. The point I am getting at is that I have no garuntee I will ever actually research more tank tech at all. Instead, I will get a bunch of filler techs that I am not interested in during the course of my long, potentially never-ending search for tank tech.

Additionally, completely random tech, such as that already existing in GW, is better than a semi-random tech tree in that the random tech makes no appearance of having any rhyme or reason. As such, it is much easier to balance out from a naieve point of view because all the devs have to do is make each tech have roughly the same effect, both positive and negative, to the player. Thus, no one tech is viewed as overpowered. Even if there was an OP tech, it doesn't necessarily mean that everyone will run with that tech because you have no garuntee of ever encountering it during a playthrough. As opposed to a semi random tech tree, a completely random pool of tech is a functional idea because going in as the play you already know you will have to surrender whatever semblance of control you think you have over you tech decisions and just play with what you are given.

Unlike a semi-random tech tree, a random tech tree encourages play in response to what the game throws out at you, only making a player better and better capable of reaching his/her "zaphod limit." semi random techs rather give you the appearance of having control when you really have none, leading the player to get annoyed when he/she might be trying to work on one style of play but the randomness of the tech tree has locked off t2 tanks (continuing the above example) until the very last tech on the very last branch of the tech tree. Finally, tech trees as they are known know work to help players ease into the game because everyone knows what a tech tree is and how it functions. It helps to shallow out the learning curve for a game like PA which might otherwise be quite steep, a learning curve whose steepness would only be increased by a semi-random tech tree, in my view at least.

I can also give you examples of why the semi-random tech tree is COMPLETELY dysfunctional in a multiplayer setting. I can make a post on that below if you want me too but at the moment I will just leave that thinking to you to see what kind of reasons, both for and against, a semi random tech tree might have in both singleplayer and multiplayer settings.

I know this is long but thanks for the read if you get down to here!

EDIT: my ideas are laid out in greater detail here: https://forums.uberent.com/threads/the-great-tech-debate.60464/

Howdy, been watching the thread over the last few days and have been working on ways to refine the system to how people would like it. And I think I have come up with something that is a good balance of the order of a tech tree but with randomization folded in; in a way that to my knowledge would be unique to PA.

One) We keep the card system as is with a small modification. Set the function that calls cards to only include the cards that you can use. Form a program perspective this is simply a matter of throwing in a bool on the advanced cards and have them only be true if the pre requisite card is equipped. Also take out the ones that give you more data slots (will come back to this in a sec) start with 3 but also load out depended.

Two) Each time you conquer a system you are given a technology. If you want you replace something you have for it but regardless that tech is then "decompiled" into a number of tech points. Now the tech points are used on upgrading your cards that each have there own mini tech tree. EG Bots can be upgraded with a improvement to; speed, fabs build speed, cost, HP, DPS, etc and its is sequential. So you can upgrade your HP by 5% 10% 25% 50% and this alows you to tailer what you have to work with to your strategy. Your data slots will also be upgradable with tech points. and your commander will also have his own upgrade tree. And your sub commanders will work the same only that they to can be decomplied for more than average tech points.

Three) The upgrades are for basic and advanced units. its just if you have basic aircraft you can improve them but if you get the adv aircraft those new units will take advantage of what you have improved already. Now it is important to note that if you have a new tech you want and you recycle your basic ships all that tech will be unlearned/overwritten. but you will get a percentage of tech points back into your pool for doing so to be fair.

This system is one that I feel would make the most people happy. Its different and not too drastic of a change from what we have current. And really other than some UI and art work with some under the hood tweaks, would be a system that could be brought in "soon" (tm).

ps well if you like this you can chose the "other progression" in the poll and if people like this I will update the first post to include it as a option.

sorry for a double post but I have updated the original post.

EDIT

Just fond the title edit lol