A new way to implement technology, tech levels, and factions

According to what most people want, this idea will be liked.

Most people want 1 faction, able to build a lot of units by the choice of the player, and not a significant amount of tech level.

Well, I was thinking, most games found that its better to give the player the ability to choose his own unlock tree. Not only games with tech trees, but any unlockable, from weapons and cosmetics in shooters, to anything.

So, how about what you choose to build deciding what units you have access to?

Not exactly like Red Alert, removed from that many ways actually.

HERE IS THE IDEA. There are basic units you can produce when you build a production factory. Then, there are many "types" of tech. Let's say two of them are rocket tech and laser tech. Lets say then to produce higher units of those types, you must build an Advanced Laser R&D structure for laser units, and Advanced Rocket R&D structure for rocket units.

I LIKE IT BECAUSE it creates tech factions and levels, but all within the game from a base unit. It also gives reason to expand territory, if not making a wider base than to make a lot of seperate bases. Yet, the player would be able to choose what tech to get as he plays, and have access to individual ones by choice. It is like "create a faction from scratch".

THE ONLY PROBLEM I SEE: The units unlocked from technology trees should be utility, not raw betterness. They have to be balanced, balanced even by reguard to their cost and the powers of the basic units, and utility as in having uses yet counters. Using the same examples earlier, laser tech should create units with stronger damaging weapons but really low health, and rocket units should do less damage at average health but their shots hit groups/multiple-enemies the best.

Every player would still have the most effectual base units to use. More than likely including the base variant of the tech you can upgrade, so they have one base unit of all types of tech from the start. They just have to advance it in the order they desire to produce the theme of unit they want.

ANOTHER STRATEGY ELEMENT THIS ADDS is the fact that instead of knowing what a faction can do ahead of time and being bound by your faction, your faction is not only flexible but unknown to the enemy. You would have to do scouting to keep tabs on your enemy.

Re: A new way to implement technology, tech levels, and fact

No.

The way I see it, one of two things will always happen;

1. There becomes a clear, unquestionable, ideal choice. It could be that rocket tech. is just too flexible or too powerful.
2. For each particular situation, there will be only one sensible tech. choice.

Both of these really cut down on variety, and choice. I think implementation of your idea will have the opposite effect to your goal.

First option will leave a pile of unused units and structures; things which still cost Uber time and money to implement. The second option will result in the game being nothing more than reciting a pre-computed tree of; if in situation a, choose x. If in situation b, choose y, ad nauseum.

Re: A new way to implement technology, tech levels, and fact

Like trophy said, it still comes down to balancing. And the same argument can be made for traditional tech trees if unbalanced.

I think the main difference from a traditional tech tree and what trophy suggests is that you don't have a set path. If you find that option A is being countered by X, you can go on and upgrade option B which is effective to X.

Re: A new way to implement technology, tech levels, and fact

One of the things I hated most about SupCom2 was the research tree, so I'd really be sad if it were implemented in PA in any way, shape or form.

Edit: Fixed my mistake.

Re: A new way to implement technology, tech levels, and fact

Just to get it right: you would rather just be able to build everything from the get go? So I suppose that means you have less types of units but they're feasible from early to late game. Is that correct?

Re: A new way to implement technology, tech levels, and fact

I would most prefer the TA tech progression system, where your commander builds a lab which builds a constructor which builds an advanced factory which builds an advanced constructor which builds advanced buildings.

Re: A new way to implement technology, tech levels, and fact

Isn't that the same as a tech tree? Just implemented differently?

Re: A new way to implement technology, tech levels, and fact

I actually see some potential in this, but it's not much different for gameplay to just having a lot of factories.

I hated the SupCom 2 research tree because of all the unit buffs. If it was a research tree that only unlocked units, structures, and maybe com modules. I'd see that as an option.

I'd still prefer to just have a larger variety of factories (want a different unit set? Build a different fac).

I would very strongly oppose any situation where any given unit could become stronger or weaker based on research or any other mechanism while looking the same / almost the same as an unbuffed unit.

Edit: Clarified meaning (see below)

Re: A new way to implement technology, tech levels, and fact

Oh, After rereading my first post I noticed I had written tech tree, I meant research tree, sorry for the confusion. I think TheFirstFish also means the research tree.

Re: A new way to implement technology, tech levels, and fact

Except now you have to balance entire tech trees instead of individual units.

To the OP: What's keeping people from getting both? The only real use I see of these techs are as opening gambits.

Re: A new way to implement technology, tech levels, and fact

Good call. I did.

Re: A new way to implement technology, tech levels, and fact

Well, you could get all over time. It really boils down to where you spend your money, on tons of different techs, or building the units that could push field, and which tech you buy and which order.

This is really what I suggest to some degree. I was thinking it could be a factory producing just stealth units, or an "wing added to an existing factory" that allows it to produce stealth, or a seperate structure that allows your factory to produce stealth.

Really, units should be balanced around "can the same price of other things beat it's value in counterparts, with some but little flexibility to weak-against and strong-against".

Then the strategy depends on what it is that allows you to produce the units. Is it an addon to a factory? Then only that factory is furnished with the ability to produce those units, and when destroyed you must start fresh. Is it the structure? Then if the structure is gone, the factory works, but doesn't produce those units until replaced. Is it a seperate factory? Then you have a lot like the first, except you can produce other units when they factory is gone, spreading out their value.

I like the first slightly better because it makes it more satisfying to destroy the factory and limits additional factories producing those units, while perhaps adding the cost of a new factory if you want different units.

Also, you do realize game balance will probably be updated with patches after release, right? Especially if something gets used 100% of the time. Until every person favoring every strategy gets their fill of annihilation of another enemy using another strategy, and all users of different strategies get their fair share of the annihilation pie.

Can you make a non-poll into a poll? I just might try with options...

Re: A new way to implement technology, tech levels, and fact

Also what I like about factories being allowed a single upgrade to build certain themes of units, if the units produced were equal strength to the original units but had different situations of use:

1)The value is added to the factory, so the factory is more valuable to destroy/defend.

2)The factory becomes unique, as you would need another factory to produce one of the other themes of units.

3) You could have the ability to produce multiple themes of units, but one factory will be able to produce its special theme at a time, requiring expanding to get the space for them, making it harder for turtles to intentionally turtle for all-tech and not fall to another player's units (since they start off just as strong)

4) Since only the factory you upgrade can make them, it prevents their overuse, and localizes their manufacture so you would need that factory close by to quickly make those units.

One thing I don't like about it this way, is not being able to quite as flexibly choose another theme. I would fix this by being able replace the last upgrade with a new one, at a reduced cost (to refund a bit of the last one bought). You could do this by having to buy the addition to the factory with 2/3 the cost, and buying what it does afterwards with 1/3, being able to then replace the "what it does" with a new one for just the 1/3 price.

It is a lot of original thinking if I am not mistaken. Wait, didn't someone say something about a factory, producing a special constructor unit, that can build a special factory? That sounds good, I should add that to voting. Was that in total annihilation? I dont remember it from it.

Re: A new way to implement technology, tech levels, and fact

Yeah. I like this. I'd already suggested that T2 factories could build a module to add 1-2 T3 units of the same type as the host factory.

Building factory upgrades to access more units has different implications for strategy lock-in than whole separate factories, but I think both approaches would work well.

Would be good for the upgrades to be buildings that are connected to the factory but have their own HP.

Re: A new way to implement technology, tech levels, and fact

While I personally loved the SC2 techtree, I feel it would be inappropriate to the setting.

Either separate factory's, or advanced engineers building separate factory's would be my vote or choice.

Re: A new way to implement technology, tech levels, and fact

Stick with the TA style of doing things. All these other ideas will not work in a multi-planet setting.
Separate labs? Build them on a "safe" planet and suddenly they're rather pointless. Might as well have the factory build all its available units by default. Building addons? Then every factory will have an addon to build every unit. Might as well just add to the cost and build time of a default factory.

The point of it is that as you get to such a grand scale of doing things, you can't add such finicky little details without making the game more cumbersome to play on a basic level. (Then people whine about the complexities and propose AIs to help them out and other people complain about the AIs and polls are created in countless number, etc etc)
Much like making each unit to be simple, with a single function and no activated abilities, keeping the factory system simple, like TA, is necessary to keeping the game comprehensive on a large scale.

Re: A new way to implement technology, tech levels, and fact

Don't know if anyone has said this already, but the two most popular of the options in the poll are obviously the SC and TA tech models. I think that the others are so ambiguous as to what they mean that it's not surprising there are no votes for them. So I've revised the poll:

• Factory upgrades, like in Supreme Commander.
• A factory specific add-on structure, that allows the building of specific T2 units from that factory.
• Separate T1 and T2 factories, like in TA.
• Flat tech tree type, like Zero K

"A seperate builder-unit, that can build the seperate factory for different units." I removed this from the poll because it just seems to me like the same as the TA option, where you build a factory and then a T2 engineer that then builds the T2 factory.

EDITED: Poll option 2 to better reflect what I feel was the sentiment of the OP.

Re: A new way to implement technology, tech levels, and fact

I agree that by making things simpler that it would be easier to understand in a large scale game. That's fine, but the Sup Com way is the best for PA IMO. It means that there are in fact less factories and less obsolescence in factories since an upgraded factory can build both T1 and T2 units. It's just less for the player to keep track of, in effect making it simpler and easier to understand.

The TA separate factory method also allows a player to send a T1 engineer to a planet and build a T2 factory there with no prerequisites. Allowing him to produce (theoretically) the most advanced units in the game on a new planet almost immediately. The Sup Com system would mean that players can only build T1 factories with any engineer and must upgrade them. This has various benefits throughout different stages of the game that have already been discussed here and elsewhere so I am not going to discuss them here.

EDITED: Corrected a typo.

Re: A new way to implement technology, tech levels, and fact

No, option 2 was a seperate structure, like a labs. Then again, I don't think I should re-edit the poll >.< did it 3 times.

Re: A new way to implement technology, tech levels, and fact

I really liked the TA tech path:

CMDR > Factory > Engineer > Advanced Factory > Advanced Engineer > Advanced structures

Obvious scope for extension to that method, and a very satisfying way to progress through the tech levels IMHO...