I think he's talking about the way dice rolls can totally screw you, at random, no warning.

Take, for example, a recent game of MOM I was playing.  I had a hero, buffed to the max, who could take on entire armies if he wanted to.  He wiped army after army after army of mixed paladins, priests, magicians, and more off the map.

But by pure chance, a mere pikeman who got an 'iron skin' buff took him out in one shot.  One shotted a hero who could, more often than not, one shot anything that attacked him.  (Note:  For the purpose of making a point, I'm ignoring a rather nasty bug where said hero somehow 'lost' the ability to attack... apparently there was a rap-around error where over-buffing left him unable to attack, only counter-attack when someone else attacked him.)

Hah, thwarted by his own magnificence!

While I like the idea of randomness allowing for unusual outcomes they should very rare.  The pen-and-paper system Savage Worlds has a mechanic whereby most dice rolls get rerolled and added to the total if they hit their highest number. As a simplified example: pikeman with d4 damage can hurt your hero if he rolls a 4, then rerolls, gets another 4 (8), rolls again, gets a 4 (12) and so on (16, 20, 24 etc)  The thing is the chances of something like that happening are very low.  It's pretty exciting when it happens in your favor though!

At least that pikeman got to be the hero for once

"You cannot best me," laughed the hero as he unmounted his horse, and made his way over to only other living thing on the charred battlefield. The lone pikeman, while injured, saw his advance and pulled himself off the ground and leaned against his pike for support.

"I'll tell you what, I'll give you one free shot, I won't even flinch," the hero boomed, his arms outstretched and his voice echoing over the now silent world, "you are barely more than a mere peasant."

The pikeman gritted his teeth, and with a second wind, launched himself at the hero. With a scream, he charged and closed his eyes for fear had gotten the best of him. He felt resistance, and he stumbled, and when he opened his eyes he saw nothing but darkness. "I must be dying," the pikeman thought to himself. But slowly the world came to, and looking up from the ground the pikman saw the hero, arms still outstretched, eyes to the sky, and against all odds his pike.. thrust through the hero's golden breastplate. "It's finally over," the pikman smiled. "the tyranny is at an end."

Now, back on topic, I agree with Luckmann. In my opinion, I just think we need something different, and unique that is realistically based so the world can feel more alive from game to game. Whether that's a hidden tech tree, random techs, or something entirely different we can't even imagine right now is what has to be decided. I think the devs will come up with something truly great, especially with a year long beta. But the civ style way of teching has just been done to the bone and i think we need to get away from that

The "mere" pikeman also happens to have the 'negate first strike' and 'armor piercing' abilities.

...  Oh, I didn't know that.  Betcha it was the last one that did me in.

Edit:  Still, one-shotting my hero... just sucks!

Personally, I like games where even "long shots" happen once in a while.  Dominions 3 is a good example of this -- it's possible that a lowly peasant can take down a fully-kitted and amped Pretender.  Very unlikely, but possible.  Thus are legends made, and all that.

The Rolemaster RPG system is also great for this.  That system is absolutely deadly, even for experienced characters.  The premise of that game design was that characters, no matter how powerful, should always be a little afraid to get into an outright fight: battles by nature are chaotic and unpredictable.  From experience, it's a realistic premise, though it doesn't always lend itself to "fun".

However, I really, really like:

Perhaps also instead of just Sword The 35th, have crossovers.

When you hit a Lvl +/- 15%, in two or three Techs, you get a Hybrid or an New Tech line to look at.

Say Stone Working, Construction, Metal Working. When all hit Lvl 20 +/- 1-4 Levels you get

ReEnforced Walls +10% to Damage walls can take

They could be in Pairs, Trips and higher for other Techs.

Metal Working, Weapon Making, Fire Magic, Ice Magic, Entropy Magic

When all hit the Marks you get Master Steel Weapons, that bracnhs into the Weapon Cats again, This MAster Steel is lighter, stronger, holds and edge longer, but can be massed produced unlike Magi Weapons.

Then When you Gain Mining XXX (magical ore), and all the others above at a new lvl mark, you can make Magic Weapons

By allowing the need for more than one Tech to open another line, or an improved line, and having it not quite random, I think you can allow guidance by the player, but not many sure things, also players will wonder if I get these up higher what might I find. Add to this some techs will be missed, and I think it works.

Lee

If I understand what you are saying correctly, it seems like an excellent idea, and something that I am reasonably sure is already implimented (or could be changed with relatively little coding).

A few members have posted that they would like a random event occuring after research because it is more realistic. To quote one member:

I really wish research was more like random discoveries instead of research a specific thing. How many leaders go into a lab and say ok I want you to research lasers with X components and Y disfusions and Z hyper active expulsions? 

I am not trying to be rude, but I would have to disagree. Most researchers head out with a goal in mind, and a general understanding of what will be involved. Consider the atom bomb, the researchers wanted to make an atom bomb and that is what they got. Consider a lightbulb, though Thomas Edison didn't know all the components, he knew most of them and in the end he got a lightbulb and not a fusion reactor. Consider cancer research today, I would be really surprised if a scientist exclaimed "I discovered teleportation technology" while researching cures for cancer. Consider the automobile, the airplane, the artificial diamond, the spaceshuttle, the computer, the television, ....


Are there unforeseen off shoots, sure, but wouldn't that be more like a technology tree where one technology leads to another.

Final note, I would rather have a game where you select what you want to research and after a while that is what you get because that would lead to strategy. You could research what you think will give you the advantage as opposed to hoping your research produces something useful. Just a thought.

opps, double post

The point isn't that researchers get random results, the point is that more often than not political leaders aren't leading the scientific process, and therefore have only limited knowledge of what to expect. Plus IRL, there's a lot of scientific progress going on at all fronts simultaneously, so maybe you want research Y, but that's no reason research Y should be expected to be a part of the next breakthrough.

The biggest discrepancy is opinion on how useful"out-of-character (OOC)" knowledge should be.  TBS games have long made heavy use of OOC knowledge and compensate by giving the same to the AI; whereas traditional RPG players (especially off-line/pen-and-paper) would like to minimize the influcence of OOC knowledge.  Would be really nice to have a option to choose between the two to appease everyone. The following thoughts can readily be adapted to either implement them (minimize OOC knowledge) or ignore them (thus giving the player full knowledge of the technology tree before hand).  Since the later (full OOC knowledge) is the "default" the question is more whether the gaming community would make developing an OOC limiter worthwhile.

Long-Term Targeting Mechanic

There would need to be some way to "research a goal" that is reasonably generalized.  Then, the game can pick the relevant technology and determine how much time/effort it would take to research, including the shortest path of pre-requisites. Then, instead of KNOWING it will take 3 turns for pre-req1 and 2 turns for pre-req2 and 4 turns for pre-req3 you know nothing about WHEN the final goal will be reached (or what other, if any, technologies you will learn as well).  You can throw much resources at "research" to the detriment of other areas but you will never know for sure when you will get breakthoughs.  If you have no specific goal you can either focus research in different areas or simply let it happen naturally.  Taken with the next section you CAN specify (by need) a technology that you have no knowledge about (i.e., that has not been partially researched) and the "partial research probabilities" for technologies along the tree will be increased so that the natural AI path-finding will be naturally directed toward the determined solution technology.

Partial-Research

After some time you may KNOW that something is possible (can be directly specified for research) but not yet have enough knowledge/experience to make effective use of it.  For these items you can directly select them for focus - though while focused no other items would become "partially known" - whereas during general unfocused research the probability of "partial-research" can increase.  Any technology adjacent to an already known technology (either fully or partially researched) can be "partially-researched" but, obviously, only technologies immediately adjacent to a fully researched technology can be actively researched.  Required/Optional Pre-Req branches and node-distance from a fully-researched technology would affect the probablity of a partially-researched technology becoming known based on game balance and playability concerns.  While unfocused the AI would be responsible for choosing the research path.  However, a general category can be specified andany adjacent, partially known, technologies on that parth could be researched (by the AI) and eligible unknown technologies on that path can become partially researched.

SUMMARY:

1) Unfocused; adjacent partially-known technologies are researched AND all unknown technologies eligable for partial-research could be partially-researched.

2) General Focus: path-specific adjacent partially-known technologies are researched AND path-specific unknown technologies can be partially-researched.

3) Direct Focus: specific adjacent technology is researched but no partial-research occurs

4) Goal Oriented Research: unknown but specific technology is chosen by the AI for shortest-path research; possible partial-research for nearby technologies; all/minimum required technologies become researched.

Multiple Pre-Req Paths Unknown During Gameplay

The biggest issue with the fixed tech-tree is that I know, for instance, guilds will lead to banking ahead of time.  To help solve this pre-knowledge the initial technology matrix can have multiple required and optional pre-requisites that are setup before the game starts and remains hidden throughout the game.  Even only having 3-4 realistic pathing choices should be enough to limit the out-of-character knowledge that is able to be used in-game - if the branching and pre-reqs are not exposed to the player.  This could readily be turned into an option whereby some players would prefer to know the full technology tree upfront (and allow the AI the same - maybe) and others can choose to remain ignorant and only learn the tree through exploration, focus and "partial-research".

I am in favour of the idea personally

Just so it's optional.

Kind of like the "View all Research" option in SEV....which would have been more relevant (after the first game) if the research tree were randomized.

Also, in terms of "real world" research, there tends to be a difference between scientific theory and engineering, and the development for each is often--though certainly not always--handled by different people.

Yes, but there was a process leading to each of those; and early enough in those processes, no one would have thought "I'm going to try to make a lightbulb!" or "I'm gonna make an atomic bomb!" So really, it does boil down to what Ynglaur said: 

Except not only are the two often handled by different people, but the engineering typically comes after the scientific theory has been hammered out. And there is quite a bit of randomness in the hammering out of scientific theories. For example, the idea that one should theoretically be able to produce a nuclear chain reaction first occurred to Leo Szilard on a street corner, contrary to Ernest Rutherford's conclusions and the general consensus of the time. He was basically daydreaming about physics when the idea struck him... The notion that one can create a nuclear chain reaction must exist before anyone can set out to create an atomic bomb.

Also, the invention of the computers that don't occupy a warehouse was a side-effect of the Apollo missions. They needed computers to handle all the data, but computers of the time were way too big to send to space. So they devised a way to build much smaller computers without sacrificing functionality. Cancer research (and medical/drug research in general) produces results that have wide-ranging impacts in broader fields. Obviously it won't lead to teleportation, but it does often lead to advances in other related fields.

If you tell your research advisors that you want more durable swords, there are many paths you might go down. Maybe your researchers will devise a method of forging the same materials into a stronger alloy, or maybe they'll figure out how refine some other type of ore that can be forged into a stronger metal.

If you give your researchers a goal to aim for, then the variety of what you might end up with should satisfy that goal. If you ask for improved swords, you shouldn't discover a better way of managing your fields. If you demand only that your researchers work on methods of improving infrastructure, you might learn how to build better roads, or walls, or wells, or whatever - and maybe an occasional something that doesn't fall under 'infrastructure improvement' but is related in some way. Going back to the weapon example. Assume at the beginning of the game you task your researchers with the goal of improving your weapons, before you've figured out how to make metal tools. In the process of figuring out how to make better weapons, maybe they'll figure out how to forge metal tools; but even before they perfect it to the point of making useable swords and axes, they might get good enough at it to produce metal farming tools. This is completely in line with the historical process of invention and I think something like it would make the game quite interesting. 

There are merits to both the more realistic, and more OOC systems.

I for one, would really like to see it implemented around a traditional TBS system (with the variable pre-reqs), with the ability to turn on "obscure tech tree" and "goal-based research". Each would require a dramatically different means of approaching the game, and likely wouldn't require all that much extra coding to implement.

But everyone seems to be forgetting that the game will be highly modable, you could make and edit the tech tree as you see fit

AAAAAGH. WHY must people insist on this horrendously flawed argument?! "It doesn't matter what Stardock does! They could make a crappy, worthless game. But you can mod it! So you can make it better yourself!"

It's utter garbage. The game should be good and extremely enjoyable to the vast majority of people who like this kind of game. The point of these forums is to toss around and discuss ideas that might make the game better. Being able to mod it is wonderful and great, and it means people can tailor specific aspects of the game more to their personal liking, or keep the game fresh even after a very long time by changing things up. It does not, however, mean that nothing matters. It doesn't mean Stardock should implement every single controversial idea and just count on the people who don't like them to mod them away (and likewise it doesn't mean Stardock should just stick to the same-old same-old and count on people to mod in variety and innovation).

If there are lots of features that really annoy a lot of the audience for the game, then there will be a lot of people who will be disappointed with it, modding tools or not. Moddability is not in any way an excuse for the developers not to do their job well...

You misunderstand me, i am not refering to a complete conversion. If thats not what you meant i'm sorry your post was very extreme and don't ever reply like that again, im not a ten year old kid. Don't lecture me on the point of the fourms either that was a very destriuctive post and if i had half a mind i would report it. You fail to see it is going to almost impossible for stardock to implement a tech system that everyone is 100% satisfied with but the fact that they give you the choice to mod is an advantage as you yourself said as it will mean "people can tailor specific aspects of the game more to their personal liking, or keep the game fresh even after a very long time by changing things up" . In fact i would be willing to bet that stardock has already decided as a team what the tech tree is going to be like and we the beta testers will just be tweaking and improving the system to make it the best it an be.

First of all, chill out a bit.  People vent a bit sometimes, and that wasn't even a particularly egregious example of it.  He didn't even say anything mean about your mom. Might want to rephrase that last sentence there too...

Everyone knows that the game will be moddable, and that Stardock can't please everybody.  What needs to be done is to figure out a system that will at least please most people and do it in a way that won't be ridiculously complicated.  After that if some small percentage of people feel the need for something different, they can resort to mods, but at least the game will be good for most people out of the box.

So, I think the consensus is....

1. The tech system in the game should be fun for a majority of players

2. The tech system in the game should be moddable enough to change it from #1 (see above).

In other words, Frogboy: we want our cake, and we want to eat it too.