Technology
Like any other 4X game, star apocalypse will feature technological progress. How this is represented in the game is quite different from what you are used to however.
How it was:
You click what technology you want to research. Each technology has a certain amount of research points it needs to be completed, and you build research buildings to generate research points. More over, each progressive tech is usually the improvement of an older.
I think I have played more scifi 4X games with the following tech tree than without it: Propulsion research tree: first three techs: same low speed, progressively better engines in terms of size and cost. Next three techs: 1 more speed than the previous 3, but a new bulky engine that gets improved along these three tech levels. Take a wild guess what the next 3 and the 3 after that look like.
There is no new technology, it's just the obligatory steady improvement of a game statistic.
How it will be:
Needless to say, this will be different. Instead of directly researching techs, research will be a natural process, that the player can encourage should he wish to do so.
Lets first explain the technicalities of the system, before we go into explaining what it will effect: The technological advancement of a society is represented by a great tree to which every game occurrence is a leaf.
For example (and this might no necessarily be included in this shape in the game), a ‘leaf' could be a gravity slingshot, a leaf located on the branch of Newtonian physics, Newtonian physics, which in turn is a subgroup of physics, which falls under science.
Now what we do is assigning each leaf and branch a value. A value on a leaf which increases whenever it is used, and decays when not used. So every time a gravity slingshot is used, this improves the gravity slingshot a little.
This increase is then fed back to the branch, which also increases, and makes it easier for other leafs on the same branch to grow. So, Newtonian physics also improves a little, and all the other leafs on that branch (calculating one's orbit for example) also improve more easily. This process is repeated between ‘Newtonian physics' and ‘Physics', and between ‘Physics' and ‘Science', the one slingshot giving increasingly minuscule contributions.
The basics of this system is that using is improving. The more you use a gravity slingshot, the more proficient you will become at it, the higher skill levels yielding increasing bonuses for your society. The other great advantage is in the way it unlocks new technologies: by feeding back the steady improvement of your societies advancement, the branch ‘grows' and new, very small, leaves sprout.
Thus you have a more or less natural advancement of your tech tree.
But what if you want to go in a different direction? Well, there are a few things you can do. You can spend some highly valuable citizenry on building a research lab; a lab that is dedicated to one specific branch and will, somewhat randomly, improve it. Or, you could start using different technologies more and nudge your advancement that way. Or, you could start trading more with a peoples that have what you want, hoping to learn from them.
Another advantage, game wise, is that as the conditions and purpose of different colonies vary. They will use different solutions and technologies, providing a natural differentiation between them, as far as technology is concerned.
Last but not least, this system is not limited to this or that game mechanic, there is not a branch that steadily improves engines. Instead, some branches will have leafs that are a manner of transportation, and these leafs themselves will improve when used. At first maybe combustion/exhaust engines are all that's available, but the nature of the game changes completely when there is discovered how to ‘warp' or ‘jump' or make ‘wormholes', or whatever else strikes your fancy.
In short, we hope to provide a much more realistic model of tech progression, which will make for variation between different colonies & variation in important game mechanics (such as the mode of travel, the nature of war, economic priorities, etc). More importantly, we seek to do so with an open ended system which can easily include pretty much anything.
So if you have any idea's, the Tech Thread is waiting for you.
