Ashes II Dev Journal #7: Tech Trees vs. Building Upgrades

In Ashes of the Singularity, we had a bit of a hybrid system for unlocking orbital abilities, units, and buildings. If you built the right building, you unlocked a additional units, buildings, and orbital abilities.

On the other hand, if you wanted to upgrade your abilities, like armor quality or logistics or weapon power and such, you had to increment a corresponding technology level, which you did by spending the Quanta resource.

So here we are again, Ashes of the Singularity II. One of the biggest design philosophy shifts from the first game is to slow down the APM requirements, in order to add more strategic depth to the game. Which brings back the question of when to have unlocks handled through the tech tree vs. when to have them handled by buildings:

[An early look at a possible research screen, testing out different tech categories and progression]

Now the current thinking is that your placed buildings should unlock other (more advanced) buildings. Technology would unlock additional units, upgrades, and orbitals. This way, we can still gate access to some buildings, particularly advanced buildings. If a building requires a resource like Radioactives (officially called Elerite by the USA/Chinese/NATO/Russia consortium after much argument), we only unlock it once you have built at least one Elerite Refinery.

RTS games, whether it be StarCraft, Supreme Commander, Tempest Rising (check that game out), or, of course, Sins of a Solar Empire, take different approaches. What’s your view on the balance of tech trees vs. building unlocks? Let us know in the comments.