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In the absence of name suggestions I hearby christen our research and probe thread, the Green Witch Maritime Research and Privateer Inn.
As Cuspidore made a quite a number of interesting observations on techs from the Chart Room, I copied the post here. It might be good practice from here on in to keep all our chats on tech in the one place. If we can.
I might copy over the others too. Might edit it to remove rum influence.
I've never made to much of a study of bee-lines, so I don't know if there is any inherent Pirate advantage in research offerings coming into play here, but barring that, I would think that our chances of getting SoHB first
would be kind of slim, what with the University's free tech and NetNodes and the Borg's research bonus, not to mention Miriam starting out with one of the prereqs and likely a running start on the energy/labs production. If either one of our EggHead fellow humans wanted to go that way, I doubt we could beat them. It's going to be a while before we are able to do any terraforming at all, so unless there are a lot of handy energy specials waiting for us, our research will be kind of slow. Since we are starting with 2 techs, our research costs (currently listed at 35 , will be noticibly higher than those with only 1 tech, which will aslo slow us down. I guess that if we were to go for SoHB, we would in effect be betting that the others would all go for Centauri Empathy(sic) and would waste their first research on that.
I am pretty sure that the bee llines are not necessarily the same for each faction. I believe that the game mechanics choose research offerings to withhold (i.e. techs that you have the prereqs to research but are not offered) on a strict rotation: each tech is offered for two turns and withheld 1 turn and that each tech is assigned to one of three groups of techs; one of these groups is withheld each turn, rotating through the groups each time you choose, so that you can be confident that a tech will not be withheld twice in a row.
There are a two wrinkles in this schema: (1) the rotation advances when you acquire techs by other means, like trading, stealing or pod popping, so if you get 2 techs on the side between research, you will have the same group of techs withheld; and (2) that there is always at least one tech offered and that it is also predetermined in some fashion (perhaps depending on your faction's research preferences or some such); whatever this sequence of 'wild card' techs is, it will lead to a particular tech being exempt from the withholding rotation and so always offered until you research it, at which point another tech will become the wild card. I don't know all the details of this theory, and it does have a few skeptics, but I have been keeping track (albeit imperfectly) of tech offerings in PBEMs for quite a while now and have not seen any evidence to refute it. To the extent that I am able, I will try to keep track in this game too and share whatever insight and suggestions devolve from it. (pardon the ramble if you are already true believers and I have been preaching to the choir).
In addition to SoHB or just going for CentEmpathy(sic), we could consider going for techs that will be unlikely to be researched by others, thus guaranteeing us trade goods and relying on those trades to get the 'normal' techs. This strategy has some risk associated with it, particularly if we turn out to be unable to get any essential techs that way, but as long as we have ships out there (if we lose our initial ship, we are in trouble and I at least, will be cursing Googlie for dropping out our spare), we should be in a position to make a lot of early trades (we may want to consider not trading others' commlinks too readily, keeping a trade monopoly as long as possible), and the risk is probably not too bad.
I'm incllined to vote for CentEmpathy(sic), but I'm not adamantly opposed to one of the other approaches.
As Cuspidore made a quite a number of interesting observations on techs from the Chart Room, I copied the post here. It might be good practice from here on in to keep all our chats on tech in the one place. If we can.
I might copy over the others too. Might edit it to remove rum influence.
I've never made to much of a study of bee-lines, so I don't know if there is any inherent Pirate advantage in research offerings coming into play here, but barring that, I would think that our chances of getting SoHB first
would be kind of slim, what with the University's free tech and NetNodes and the Borg's research bonus, not to mention Miriam starting out with one of the prereqs and likely a running start on the energy/labs production. If either one of our EggHead fellow humans wanted to go that way, I doubt we could beat them. It's going to be a while before we are able to do any terraforming at all, so unless there are a lot of handy energy specials waiting for us, our research will be kind of slow. Since we are starting with 2 techs, our research costs (currently listed at 35 , will be noticibly higher than those with only 1 tech, which will aslo slow us down. I guess that if we were to go for SoHB, we would in effect be betting that the others would all go for Centauri Empathy(sic) and would waste their first research on that.
I am pretty sure that the bee llines are not necessarily the same for each faction. I believe that the game mechanics choose research offerings to withhold (i.e. techs that you have the prereqs to research but are not offered) on a strict rotation: each tech is offered for two turns and withheld 1 turn and that each tech is assigned to one of three groups of techs; one of these groups is withheld each turn, rotating through the groups each time you choose, so that you can be confident that a tech will not be withheld twice in a row.
There are a two wrinkles in this schema: (1) the rotation advances when you acquire techs by other means, like trading, stealing or pod popping, so if you get 2 techs on the side between research, you will have the same group of techs withheld; and (2) that there is always at least one tech offered and that it is also predetermined in some fashion (perhaps depending on your faction's research preferences or some such); whatever this sequence of 'wild card' techs is, it will lead to a particular tech being exempt from the withholding rotation and so always offered until you research it, at which point another tech will become the wild card. I don't know all the details of this theory, and it does have a few skeptics, but I have been keeping track (albeit imperfectly) of tech offerings in PBEMs for quite a while now and have not seen any evidence to refute it. To the extent that I am able, I will try to keep track in this game too and share whatever insight and suggestions devolve from it. (pardon the ramble if you are already true believers and I have been preaching to the choir).
In addition to SoHB or just going for CentEmpathy(sic), we could consider going for techs that will be unlikely to be researched by others, thus guaranteeing us trade goods and relying on those trades to get the 'normal' techs. This strategy has some risk associated with it, particularly if we turn out to be unable to get any essential techs that way, but as long as we have ships out there (if we lose our initial ship, we are in trouble and I at least, will be cursing Googlie for dropping out our spare), we should be in a position to make a lot of early trades (we may want to consider not trading others' commlinks too readily, keeping a trade monopoly as long as possible), and the risk is probably not too bad.
I'm incllined to vote for CentEmpathy(sic), but I'm not adamantly opposed to one of the other approaches.
This may differ when the Cusipidore plays it, but what's our backup choice? I'm thinking either ProgPsy (leads to res armor & weaps -and- would be a good trade b/c I doubt anyone else will pick it) or InfoNets (only one more tech to PlanNets & foil probes 
) Biogen's not crucial since our Domes act like RecTanks, and well we have nothing to use lasers on...yet 
)
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