Yes, but will rework of tech system be worthy of their time? If Brad is capitalist, will he be able to extract profitsss from this endeavor?

Not just fuel, but other resources as well. All that could sum up in our production, resources, and logistics chain - the bigger the tanks are, the thirstier their engines will be, thus increasing logistics cap needed to sustain them. Extrapolate this to whole industry area, and you'll get what I mean.

I can't send you any numbers because I don't have any, only approximations. All I'm saying, that if our resource chain (paragraph above) can sustain our industry, then we should be able to produce more than 1 ship in few weeks, if we want to survive, otherwise - re-read my post about T-34/Shermans versus Tigers. Manufacturing during peace time is one thing, manufacturing during wartime is another, especially when there is some hidden boost is.

I do not mean our industry should be able to produce hundreds of dreadnoughts daily, but there should be some reference chart. I do hope devs have one. At least in the name of the balance. No, I'm not with druids.

If I'm not mistaken, when one of messages Valve had on their Steam Dev Days, is that they behave like newcomers, they don't act like EA or Ubisoft, who behave like they uncovered the secret to the popularity of Britney Spears in the early 21st century.  

As far as in Twilight of the Arnor all the factions having their own techs was the most significant improvements. In Sins of the solar empire this was also a nice touch probably because I haven't played to many Real time strategy. If this has worked so well for Twilight then how would a tech upgrade not help Galactic civilizations. The better the tech upgrade better the game. If it's worked already how come would they not consider it. Do what works at least while trying new things, I always been saying enhance the game mechanics. This would upgrade diplomacy and research. I think the new game is probably going to get a major tech overhaul.  There were also other considerations I listed in what would be your favorite 4x game.




If I'm not mistaken, when one of messages Valve had on their Steam Dev Days, is that they behave like newcomers, they don't act like EA or Ubisoft, who behave like they uncovered the secret to the popularity of Britney Spears in the early 21st century.  [/quote]

That is probably part of what keeps me with Stardock is that they seem to care what people think instead of telling us what we want.

2admiralWillyWilber

Now I think we discussed everything on this matter and all we have to do now - is to wait.

I'd like to see research tied to the form of political economy; that's much more realistic, adds another dynamic that should be negotiable by both AI and new players, creates "optimal governments" for certain types of astrography/maps and it can't possibly be very efficient coordinating dozens or hundreds of planetoids via interstellar IPv6 haha

i.e; dictator/authoritarians can only research 1 item but a Republic has 2 research items, a Democracy has 4 and a Federation has 8

this opportunity to research can be balanced by making researching as many things in parallel the most budgetarily efficient (less expensive coordination over smaller distances) and any equivalent of GC2's 'Creativity' ability to be more likely and effective BUT researching fewer things would obviously get it done faster (intellectual brute force) and could cause some sort of stacking bonus if concentrated on the same branch of the technotree (there could be an inverse effect if you try to research multiple items within the same branch to prevent circumvention of this by players?)

If something like this is done I hope my idea of different governments for different factions is done to balance this with the Yor. This is inspiring me for another idea they could have specialized techs to add to the factions techs based on what party you pick.

I haven't read every single post in this thread, but I have often wished that GC was more like Outpost when it comes to research (and production).  In outpost you built research facilities and each facility chose what to research.  Each Factory also chose what to produce.

Of course, in Outpost you didn't have 2.5 billion colonists on one ship...

The multiple-researching thing was done in Homeworld.

Honestly, it didn't work out that well, even though they implemented it correctly - e.g. it was more efficient to research multiple things in parallel than do them serially.

But, however, there were always critical technologies that people wanted fast, and provided significant advantages. So, even if the parallel research path got you more techs over the same period of time than by serially researching them, the advantage of having certain technologies well before others more than off set that.

So, in the end, everyone went to just serial research. Nobody did parallel research.

Because, if, in 100 time units, you could get Ion Cannons, Shields, and Advanced Engines, it did you no good if your opponent could get Ion Cannons in 60 time units, and show up at your doorstep at the 100 time unit instant with a fleet of Ion-equipped ships. You got creamed before you could counter.

It turns out, this is one of the places where game mechanics trump realism.

Most of you are familiar with the system, but for the benefit of those few who aren't:

You allocate percentages of your research budget to six different fields, one tech at a time in each field.

Each tech has a base cost of RP that has to be spent, to not gain automatic discovery of the tech, but a chance that increases every turn you spend doing the research. Neat trick in this is that even trickle research isn't futile, you gain interest on spent RPs and you can get lucky & discover the tech at low percentages. And if you cease to fund a particular field entirely, the chance for discovery goes to zero until you restore funding, and the achieved percentage with same level of funding starts to decrease.

Techs you can research are randomly chosen from groups of one to five, and the race you play has (is supposed to have, there are some bugs) an effect on how many techs you can research in any particular field. This randomness adds to the gameplay: you can miss some key tech in your tree, forcing you to decide if you try to circumvent the gap by other research, by hoping to have more advanced similar tech in your tree later on, by stealing the tech or by trading for the tech.

The compound interest you get for your research and the fact that you guarantee a breakthrough only at 200% of the base cost, but can get lucky already at 101% makes simultaneous research viable, even desirable way in MOO. And sometimes it is best to just concentrate on one or two techs at a time, to get 'em faster.

Even if you take the randomness of the techtrees away, MOO -style research might spice things up in GCIII a bit.