Too many unsignificant techs

[Grumbold]

Familiarity eases that problem a bit. At the start of the game I know which techs I want to look for and shoot for first. Later I'll look for other species with things I need to balance whatever problems I'm having.

The gradual improvement system greatly limits the problem of people being stuffed by the lack of certain basic techs.

[kalbear]

One of the bigger problems is that there is simply so much to weed through, that it's hard to tell what is good and bad. Autofactories are as important if not moreso than they were in MoO2 in terms of production increases. Soil enrichment is often a key, as are deep extraction and automining early on. Robo factories are also amazing. Pollution processors and decomp centers are excellent picks.

And then you have to wade through...so much other stuff. There's all the weapon techs, which have at least two special mods (autofire, enveloping, etc) + improved and two levels of miniaturization; there's four different types of beam weapons, each of which has a new weapon every 5 levels or so.

That's a LOT of techs. What's more ridiculous is that one can get things like 'plasma beam miniaturization I' without plasma beams. Great.

Then there's the wonder of the HFOG improvements, which aren't all that helpful. Or the weird biodiversity ones, that don't appear to do all that much. Reducing the techs to the actual useful ones (without the mini/autofire/etc) and letting those be defined by tech level, ala MoO2, would be a great step.

[kalbear]

Double post...sorry.

[Harry Seldon]

What's more ridiculous is that one can get things like 'plasma beam miniaturization I' without plasma beams. Great.

I agree. It's like finding a way to colorize television signals but not having a way to receive them.

[Trifna]

Sometimes they could be generalized in one thing... AT LEAST (maybe at best also) they could be like... all in one technology to which are givin parts. Exemple:
Fusion motorcycle, part A: rotationary engine

And this technology would be represented by ONE icon, except it would be divided in parts like this, that wouldn't necessarily research in order (A, B, C...). THIS would be simple and complete. Each tech could get a ratio next to it (1 of 4 parts). MAYBE (if not complexifying) some parts could be useful to more than one tech.