Basic Technology Research System for Hazeron Starship

[Deantwo]

Technology and research there of is a topic we all always seem to come back to. But now that Hazeron is no longer a MMO, the topic is very different.

I will first quickly try to explain what was good about the patent system, and what was bad about it. This should give us a good baseline to discuss from.

Old Patents

The patent system had a couple good features. This was mainly the fact that it hid advanced technologies before the player had the resources to use them. The other being that having a type of "research" that unlocks more advanced technology just feels nice and natural in this type of science fiction game.

The bad things about patents was how there was way too many and they were over complicated. Having a patent for each and every manufacturing process was too much. And the whole quality limiting aspect made it so you had to keep updating all your many patents every time you found a better quality resource.

Desired Technology Research Features

Since the game is now a singleplayer game, and there is no need to have technology be a constant worry or something you can lose. Having it be a simple system that just unlocks the path to first space travel and then more advanced spacecraft subsystems is perfectly fine.

To try and make a basic list of things we would want it to do:

• Have the research be simple to understand and easy to use.
  
• Have each step of the technology research feel useful.
  
• Hide advanced buildings before you can use them.
  
• Hide advanced manufacturing processes before you can use them.
  
• Unlock new features of the game in milestone like research projects.
  
• Possibility to have some technology research require a story mission to be completed.
  
• Use technology research as a part of the tutorial.
  

Basic Example

When you first start the game, have it so you can only build basic building types. Such as Farms, Houses, Mines, Smelters, and Universities. Then have the player have to build up a basic settlement with these buildings before having them research a simple "Cities" technology at the University, which then unlocks all the morale buildings, Apartment building, Capitol building, and the food and liquor industry buildings. Then once they have a city built, they will be able to research "Oil" technology which will unlock the Well and all the industry related to plastic production. After that have the same for "Electronics". Basically unlocking areas of the game as they become necessary for the player to advance, to prevent new players from being too overwhelmed and confused.

Once basic space flight is possible, each of the advanced resources the player finds could be used as a technology research each. You found Eludium, you can research a technology to unlock all manufacturing processes related to it. It could also be based on the individual spacecraft subsystems and module types, such as researching shields, FTL, and so on.

And I have mentioned this a number of times. But the idea of researching a FTL drive giving you a story mission to do a test flight in a prototype spacecraft just sounds awesome.

Anyway, what does everyone else think?

[Vooker525]

Yep. Visual limiting factor is needed.

[Neils Iyssada]

Yes, it's needed.

I'll add that tutorial would be asked each time you wanna create an empire, before joining the universe. You can decline it (even the first time).
During the tutorial (at least until gravity drive / WARP is researched) you don't have access to workshop designs unless you turn them on in the options. This would avoid confusing newbies more than they should be.

As for stories tied to tech researches : yes.
We could start with missile and canon techs (they must be made non-physical before), then with a story we could unlock energy weapons. Same for transporters and some other techs (like high pressure buildings).

[Celarious]

I definitely agree that more advanced processes/commodities/buildings should be hidden at the start, really would help with the feeling of progression, loved that part of patents

Also big yes on linking some techs to story missions, test flights for FTL research sounds cool

I do kinda miss the old thing where techs like transporters required a certain QL of resources, so maybe that could be kinda replicated with the "new features milestones" point, so maybe like the io tube/ioplasma commodities are completely hidden from surveys/reports until you hit a certain level of research or even exploration/story completion

[kajanov]

Blocking the workshop gets a big NO from me. Not everyone is able to penetrate the designer and make something that works well and looks at least passable and the designes provided wit hthe game are .. lacking.

They are passable, but don't work very well. Mostly because they are tiny and you,as a result need a lot of them. this make s a functional city not look too pretty more so to do with the distnace you can effectively place buildings neatly than the models not being good looking
moving to a building site and back whe you are done is also bad, because you need to be on the capitol to be efficient when building (your firest city at the very least).

If the story works, I wouldn't be strongly against having it be a prerequisite for progressing the thech tree.

Test flights.. Don't care either way.

[Neils Iyssada]

Blocking the workshop gets a big NO from me. Not everyone is able to penetrate the designer and make something that works well and looks at least passable and the designes provided wit hthe game are .. lacking.

They are passable, but don't work very well. Mostly because they are tiny and you,as a result need a lot of them. this make s a functional city not look too pretty more so to do with the distnace you can effectively place buildings neatly than the models not being good looking
moving to a building site and back whe you are done is also bad, because you need to be on the capitol to be efficient when building (your firest city at the very least).

If the story works, I wouldn't be strongly against having it be a prerequisite for progressing the thech tree.

Test flights.. Don't care either way.

Obviously we have to get good default designs.

Or instead of blocking them, put only Haxus buildings by default via the building "sorter" menu. That way new players won't have a whole building universe thrown at them. Tutorial would talk about this menu at the right time and explain building exchange in depth.

[Deantwo]

Blocking the workshop gets a big NO from me. Not everyone is able to penetrate the designer and make something that works well and looks at least passable and the designes provided wit hthe game are .. lacking.

They are passable, but don't work very well. Mostly because they are tiny and you,as a result need a lot of them. this make s a functional city not look too pretty more so to do with the distnace you can effectively place buildings neatly than the models not being good looking
moving to a building site and back whe you are done is also bad, because you need to be on the capitol to be efficient when building (your firest city at the very least).

Disabling the workshop fully during the very start isn't needed. But limiting it so players can't accidentally place a mega Mine that cost 2 million stone as their first stone Mine is needed. Think of it as an optional tutorial section that limits your choices so the game is less confusing and so you don't screw yourself over.

Also, maybe separating the stone-only Quarry so it is a separate building type would likely make it easier for players.
See: http://www.hazeron.com/mybb/showthread.php?tid=2985

Yes, a way to skip the tutorial stage limitations would be nice for us veterans of the game.

[Rockinsince87]

Blocking the workshop gets a big NO from me. Not everyone is able to penetrate the designer and make something that works well and looks at least passable and the designes provided wit hthe game are .. lacking.

They are passable, but don't work very well. Mostly because they are tiny and you,as a result need a lot of them. this make s a functional city not look too pretty more so to do with the distnace you can effectively place buildings neatly than the models not being good looking
moving to a building site and back whe you are done is also bad, because you need to be on the capitol to be efficient when building (your firest city at the very least).

Disabling the workshop fully during the very start isn't needed. But limiting it so players can't accidentally place a mega Mine that cost 2 million stone as their first stone Mine is needed. Think of it as an optional tutorial section that limits your choices so the game is less confusing and so you don't screw yourself over.

Also, maybe separating the stone-only Quarry so it is a separate building type would likely make it easier for players.
See: http://www.hazeron.com/mybb/showthread.php?tid=2985

Yes, a way to skip the tutorial stage limitations would be nice for us veterans of the game.

Agreed. Must have a way to skip the tutorial stage. And having a pure hand holding tutorial that explains what you are doing and why you are doing what you are doing would be great for new players. The why is a must for understanding. 

Honestly if I had time I would help make a youtube tutorial series. Try to keep each video 2-5 minutes long tops.

[Ivan]

I definitely agree that more advanced processes/commodities/buildings should be hidden at the start, really would help with the feeling of progression, loved that part of patents

Also big yes on linking some techs to story missions, test flights for FTL research sounds cool

I do kinda miss the old thing where techs like transporters required a certain QL of resources, so maybe that could be kinda replicated with the "new features milestones" point, so maybe like the io tube/ioplasma commodities are completely hidden from surveys/reports until you hit a certain level of research or even exploration/story completion

I feel like missions/story that make you discover tech should be optional. They could aid new players to discover how everything is produced. (i was thinking about a story that would pretty much explain everything on how to defeat the asteriod, step by step through missions. E.g. it could guide you to warp, but you could also discover it yourself.

It should also be possible to just drop the mission and be able to get all tech otherwise.
For this reason and the fact uranium wasn't invisible to us before we discovered fission or Iron Ore wasn't invisible to us before we knew we could smelt it in to Iron metal, means I'm very much against those resources not showing up in scans.

I'd prefer just having optional guidance through missions and needing resource and perhaps resource samples, but only once and not for every tech level, and not for every process either.
just indeed some milestones like u said (rocket engines, vehicles/oil refining, electronic parts, computers, grav drives, WH, warp). Think I'd prefer tech disks/thumb drives like before over hidden resources.

[Celarious]

For this reason and the fact uranium wasn't invisible to us before we discovered fission or Iron Ore wasn't invisible to us before we knew we could smelt it in to Iron metal, means I'm very much against those resources not showing up in scans.

I meant like hide the actual processed versions of the raw resource, like io tubes and transporter modules, not the raw resource itself

I'd prefer just having optional guidance through missions and needing resource and perhaps resource samples, but only once and not for every tech level, and not for every process either.
just indeed some milestones like u said (rocket engines, vehicles/oil refining, electronic parts, computers, grav drives, WH, warp). Think I'd prefer tech disks/thumb drives like before over hidden resources.

Problem is this is basically just patents again, but with even less gameplay and content, because with patents they stopped mattering once you spent the 2 minutes getting the "sample" (trading the thing to the building), but at least you could do them again if you wanted higher QL (or Haxus hardcoded each patent to take 300 days to get, which is also terrible), but now it's a one-time unlock for a few processes and then it gets completely forgotten about, as if it isn't even in the game to begin with

Sidenote one of the things I really liked about the TL system was having to ship around tech disks to each city that you wanted to tech up, having the tech magically appear throughout your empire feels weird and also kills a lot of the interesting gameplay about it imo