The old TL system is nothing but wasted time. At the start of the fifth universe it took the veteran empires a week to get to TL32. So the TL system only really punished players that didn't know how to exploit it.
Not to mention that with new-style cities you can get huge populations in no time and have giant universities. So the TL grind would likely be even easier to overcome now.
What you seem to want with "progression gating" is just a way to limit how fast an empire can get to warp and gigantic spacecraft. Neither of which is a fault of the "no tech" situation.
Waiting a week to grind through the TL would only delay the large spacecraft by a week. But it still takes about a month to produce a gigantic spacecraft. As for warp, or warp9, it is still just a question of finding and exploiting the required resources.
I think the main issues you seem to have can be addressed in better ways, such as making the quality of resources and spacecraft modules matter more. For example you seem to mostly want TL because you need high quality resources to get high warp factors, that can easily be fixed by changing the warp drive material costs and maybe implement some way for quality to affect its performance. There are plenty of things where quality doesn't make a difference yet, probably because it has to do with balance and it is far from a priority right now.
The old TL system only made it harder for new players to get to something fun. Just think of how you had to reach TL2 before you could make sensor, this was not fun to wait for and meant that you had nothing to do until then. You finally found awesome cryozine? Too bad you have to wait for the RNG gods to give you the needed TLs.
Not to mention how confusing the TL system was: Why was it based on building types? Why some building TLs mattered and others didn't? Why the complicated "TL=Q/8" math? Why can't I improve TL of high Q materials from low TL allies?
I would rather keep the current "no tech" situation we have now, than go back to TL or QL.
Not to mention that with new-style cities you can get huge populations in no time and have giant universities. So the TL grind would likely be even easier to overcome now.
What you seem to want with "progression gating" is just a way to limit how fast an empire can get to warp and gigantic spacecraft. Neither of which is a fault of the "no tech" situation.
Waiting a week to grind through the TL would only delay the large spacecraft by a week. But it still takes about a month to produce a gigantic spacecraft. As for warp, or warp9, it is still just a question of finding and exploiting the required resources.
I think the main issues you seem to have can be addressed in better ways, such as making the quality of resources and spacecraft modules matter more. For example you seem to mostly want TL because you need high quality resources to get high warp factors, that can easily be fixed by changing the warp drive material costs and maybe implement some way for quality to affect its performance. There are plenty of things where quality doesn't make a difference yet, probably because it has to do with balance and it is far from a priority right now.
The old TL system only made it harder for new players to get to something fun. Just think of how you had to reach TL2 before you could make sensor, this was not fun to wait for and meant that you had nothing to do until then. You finally found awesome cryozine? Too bad you have to wait for the RNG gods to give you the needed TLs.
Not to mention how confusing the TL system was: Why was it based on building types? Why some building TLs mattered and others didn't? Why the complicated "TL=Q/8" math? Why can't I improve TL of high Q materials from low TL allies?
I would rather keep the current "no tech" situation we have now, than go back to TL or QL.