You don't need to worry that much. Yes we wanted "buildingQL" gone because it was no fun and kinda confusing to work with. But that doesn't mean that a new technology mechanic won't replace it later.
Preferably a new technology system wouldn't limit quality of resources harvested, so we can reliably trust the resource quality numbers we find to be what they are when harvested.
Something that isn't bound directly to buildings types, and isn't a passively increased by doing absolutely nothing.
The old "TL" system was better in a few ways, but also not perfect. Reseaching was affected by the size of your empire's tax income, so you could actively increase the rate of research by expanding.
But just like the "buildingQL" it also had flaws, such as being pretty much non-existent the moment you had max level. Apart from having to propagate it to all colonies there was no interaction with either system.
Blasting a veteran empire back to the literal stoneage has always been impossible, because all a prepared player had to do is save a few tech disks in a safe place and rebuild their cities. But for a new player who doesn't know about this it could be way way worse, since they would have to wait for "TL" or even a year for "buildingQL".
If technology is that easy to save there is no reason to defend if you can just move away, and players aren't punished as badly for not knowing the meta of tech disk saving.
Only advantages of the "buildingQL" system was: to increase the quality of harvested resources later on, being passive and require no maintenance at all, being possible to max out without ever leaving your home world, a small empire and a large empire increasing at the same rate, and somewhat indicating the age of an empire (or their benefactors).
Only one of which I would consider really good, and maybe another somewhat useful.
Apart from in increase in harvested resource qualities and "progression gating", can you think of anything good about it?
Preferably a new technology system wouldn't limit quality of resources harvested, so we can reliably trust the resource quality numbers we find to be what they are when harvested.
Something that isn't bound directly to buildings types, and isn't a passively increased by doing absolutely nothing.
The old "TL" system was better in a few ways, but also not perfect. Reseaching was affected by the size of your empire's tax income, so you could actively increase the rate of research by expanding.
But just like the "buildingQL" it also had flaws, such as being pretty much non-existent the moment you had max level. Apart from having to propagate it to all colonies there was no interaction with either system.
Blasting a veteran empire back to the literal stoneage has always been impossible, because all a prepared player had to do is save a few tech disks in a safe place and rebuild their cities. But for a new player who doesn't know about this it could be way way worse, since they would have to wait for "TL" or even a year for "buildingQL".
If technology is that easy to save there is no reason to defend if you can just move away, and players aren't punished as badly for not knowing the meta of tech disk saving.
Only advantages of the "buildingQL" system was: to increase the quality of harvested resources later on, being passive and require no maintenance at all, being possible to max out without ever leaving your home world, a small empire and a large empire increasing at the same rate, and somewhat indicating the age of an empire (or their benefactors).
Only one of which I would consider really good, and maybe another somewhat useful.
Apart from in increase in harvested resource qualities and "progression gating", can you think of anything good about it?