Research system draft

[Lord God Jinnai]

I understand your problem behind the basic technologies, and that particular item was a mistake, but considering how much there is kinda hard to catch them all on a first run-through. They overall idea though that I was trying to do was to allow the players to research some concepts out of the current order that they have been done in this world. This is not to say that someonce could develope the fusion power plant before they develope a fission one since they are scientifically much harder to make (fusion that is).

I was also thinking bout not having the dip down when new technologies are designed, however some of the do radiccaly change the basic fundimentals of those basic technologies. FE michochip technology turned the computer world upsidedown. I wouldn't be sitting here today in my bedroom typing this message if we still used vaccum tubes!

So basically what I might consider is a compromise. Some technologies, like microchips, would lower the basic technology level much lower than I'd have done before, however most will not. How's that?

About the effiecency problem...That's the whole concept behind basic technologies...or atleast the original reason i decided to put them in. Someone who's at 30% in agriculture will not be as effiecnet as someone who's at 60%. I was going to put that in the 'effect %' when I redid it.

Now for the military concern...I was going to put 3 tactics, maybe 4 or 5 in basic technologies: ground tactics, naval tactics, air tactics and maybe mobile tactics and cyber tactics.

Ground: basic ground troops: Infantry, archers, knights up to today's army soliders.
Naval Tactics: from the first wooden ships to aircraft carriers and battleships and submarines.
Air Tactics: From balloons, which is one tech i forgot and hang gliders to propperller planes to jets...satelites and any space ones would still be in this section since there hasn't beem to much as far as space warfare goes.
Mobile Tactics: of i do put this in it'd be for things like tanks and other such things.
Cyber Tactics: Although it hasn't really been used much yet, this is perhaps one of the most devestating type of attacks that could come in our time. Imagine having a civ wide blackout of all electronic communications.....

The costs of them getting cheaper...well wouldn't that apply to everything? The expierence I can't really do much here in the techs section cept with some of the more modern technologies. The former idea is a good concept, but I'd think that it would be more in a section of building/buying improvements, not that technology doesn't affect that...its just i haven't come up with exactly what improvements those would be.

Anywayz thanks for the info and I look forward to hearing about a reply to this and a more detailed analasys like u said.

[Paul Crocker]

Actually, a form of "cyber" tactics has been in fairly wide use over the past 15 years, although we don't hear much about it in the media. Electronic warfare can prove devastating against those unprepared for it (just ask Saddam or Milosevic!). Examples include ECM, jamming, AWACS, signal/counter signal intelligence, EMP weapons, etc.

I'm not quite sure what you're referring to, however, when you say land "tactics"...Are you referring to the technology applied to the weapons, or are you referring to the ways in which the weapons are applied on the battlefield? To be accurate, I think that "tactics" describes, well, tactics (how's THAT for profound, eh?). FE The use of aircraft for CAS (close air support) was first only seriously implemented in Korea (also in portions of WWII, but it wasn't universal until later) and really matured later than that. Before the tactics of CAS matured, aircraft were more effective in other roles. I'm more familiar with modern (WWII and later) tactics, but I'm sure that you could come up with earlier examples of tactics (maybe siege warefare in ancient times).

How detailed you get in defining and researching tactics really depends on how you plan on tying it into Clash. You should just be careful about distinguishing between "tactics" and "technology" (and "science" as well once we're on the topic) because these terms aren't completely interchangeable and you can confuse some people (nitpickers like myself!) that try to read too much into it.
[This message has been edited by Paul Crocker (edited September 30, 1999).]

[Lord God Jinnai]

Well the tactics would be based on the tech level as well as the way in which they are applied. FE the use of gunpowerder makes for differn't tactics than swords, and better guns for differnt tactics...also if u decide to use both land and air attack i'd have it to where u'd average the two out (rounded down to the nearest %). I'm trying not to get too detailed in this because i wan't the user to be able to choose his attack methods, the AI would simply use tactics to cope with the situation and its changes.

about cyber warfare, yea i know about that, i was thinking on a more civ scale than just that such as U/L viruses into all the civs computers, depleting there monitary funds (electronic that is), etc.

And tactics is a type of science also, but it is also, well, tactics.

[Paul Crocker]

I'd beg to differ that tactics are "science" since they don't have to uphold the scientific method. As a soldier, we trained for missions that were as based on political considerations as much as military considerations, but for purposes of game implementation I'll concede the point to you and call it even

[Glak]

While tactics aren't science they are knowledge. Though many cultures had both horses and bows it was the central asian nomads who developed the best tactics combining them. Without their exceptional skill in horse archery tactics (false retreat, etc..) the mongols wouldn't have dominated to the same degree. Tactics can be developed and shared much the same as most technologies. So they aren't techs but they behave in similar ways. It makes sense to throw them in with the techs.

[Mark_Everson]

Hi LGJ:

I finally have enough time and brain power at the same time to discuss your tech work further. First, let me say that it's really good. I especially like the way you use the basic technologies. That will indeed streamline things quite a bit in terms of the size of the tech tree while getting things a bit more realistic. So, pretty much all I have to go on about at length are the details.

I still Really don't like the idea that achieving a particular tech can set you back in the basic tech that is it's requisite. For one thing IMO it would be Awful for gameplay. On a different tack I don't understand why you think it has an historical basis. Let's take the example of microelectronics (you call it microchips). Microelectronics Absolutely Did Not set back the technological level that our civilization enjoyed in the basic tech of engineering, or general electronics for that matter (it's not clear to me if you mean to reduce the electronics number, or the engineering number that is a prerequisite for microchips, so my description may not be right on target depending which you meant). All that happened was that things like transistors slowly began appearing in a variety of specialty products. The whole society did not switch over to transistors instantaneously, which indeed would have given problems in terms of getting everything to work. Instead, as with most new technologies, transistors, and later microprocessors, only made their appearance gradually. To have the "revolution" run its course took decades. At no point IMO was our engineering or electronics technology any the worse for having the new microelectronic devices. The way you have it working, every technology of mine that involves electronics will be set back in its functionality or cost or both when I discover microelectronics. Why?

I think the proposal I made in the post above is the best way to work it. (That it is the difference in the basic tech level between the minimal required, and the current level, that determines how well a tech works for the society) I agree with you that allowing people to do technologies and or social advances out of the normal historical order, within some limits, is a good thing. I think that can be done by making any basic tech prerequisites be somewhat soft. So, for instance, I could research microelectronics if my engineering number is within 5% of the basic required amount, but it would be at a much steeper cost the further I get away from the number that is "required". I think there should Never be a set back to technology that doesn't occur without a loss of a general education level, infrastructure, or something like that. Can you explain to me why you need to have some technologies that set back a basic tech level? I still don't get it.

End of that rant... Like I said, I think the general idea is excellent, and I always like the way increasing technological advancements cave incremental returns in Master of Orion.

Let's see, tactics has been discussed a lot since last I was here. I think, at a minimum you would need something like 4 different levels of land tactics associated with vastly different weapons systems that have occurred throughout history. Being extremely capable in ancient warfare forms does you very little good when you go up against a modern army. The tactics are tied very closely to the capability of the weapons systems one is using, and those the opponents are using IMO. You can look at my old tech chart to get an idea of how I thought the interplay between weapons technologies and tactics might go. My ideas in that regard are pretty off-the-cuff too, I don't think there are necessarily right, just that we need something like that.

This size of the tech chart also has me somewhat concerned. I think we have to be careful not to overload the player by making the tech chart too complicated. My first shot at it has a lot of entries, it's true, but because of its rigid row-and-column format it was relatively easy to take in after bumbling around a little bit IMO. With your more free-form one with hundreds of entries we need to make sure that we give the players tools enough to handle this in a way that doesn't boggle their minds. I'm open to ideas on this, and I don't think you've necessarily gone too far, but I thought I needed to wave a warning flag at this point that we should have least consider the issue. I know this isn't the final form of your tech tree, but right now it minds me a lot of the one in Destiny. This is very scary because Destiny was an awful Turkey of a game.

What else? I noticed that you didn't have in the tech tree actual methods for facilitating General acquisition of technologies like invention, innovation, and modern research methods. IMO these are very important, and perhaps even should be rated along with the other basic technologies, as enablers for social and technical progress. I think these are also good "gate keepers" for the various technical ages that societies have gone through historically.

Another set of technologies that might work well as basic technologies are the metallurgical and materials science ones. Without different levels of expertise in, for example, iron and steel working, there are a lot of technologies that are simply unattainable.

Minor Points:
Bronze working should require a supply of tin. And on copper working, copper is so generally plentiful that I had thought we should skip it as a special resource. The real important ancient metal before iron was tin, because it's much more rare than copper. Metallurgy should require A Lot More than just copper and iron working, and mathematics. It really requires a decent practical experimental approach, and therefore I think it should require at least Invention or some similar technology.

Well, that's it for now. I admittedly haven't looked over the tech tree very carefully at this point. I think it's more important for us to agree on the big framework issues first, and then be able to zoom in on the minutae. As you flesh things out, one thing I'd like you keep in mind is that in the alpha version of Clash I and the others are working on now, we're trying to cover mostly ancient stuff first so we have a chance to have something that's playable without working out all the modern rules. If you can try to flesh out the tech tree "from the ground up" so we will have the ancient techs all worked out first, it would really help out with the alpha version.

Great Work... And I'm glad your having fun with it ;-)

Mark

[Lord God Jinnai]

Well there's arguments for and against it being a science...I think of as one, but its up to everyone here if you'd rather it not be in this area.

[Mark_Everson]

Discussion continues here: http://apolyton.net/forums/Forum21/HTML/000161.html