Research - Thoughts and Ideas

Something which we haven't seen discussed a whole lot to date is Research. I had a look through the search feature and didn't come up with much, but some of the more recent first game impression threads have had a mention or two.

From the looks of it the two TEC research trees are completed too quickly, in the way that there isn't sufficient research items available.

Something else I saw mentioned was that some feel research is too fast, while others feels it takes too long a time to research any given research item. (Meh)

Beyond increasing the available research items to make it more varied and fleshed out, something someone (ynnnaD) mentioned was that subsequent constructed research stations could decrease overall research times by a set percentage, with diminishing returns per research structure. I think that'd fit in well to accommodate varied tastes expressed throughout the forum, IF additional research items were to be implemented in the TEC research trees that is.

Also several people have expressed interest in being able to research each Capital ship individually as opposed to unlocking them all at once. That's something I agree with completely, and believe is something that would make each game play out differently, as you choose to adopt different strategies initially, or adapt throughout any given game.

With that aside, I think a review of the tech trees is in order.

First, if the capital ships were to be incorporated in to the tree as separate techs, then it's likely best to intermix some prerequisite for some of the Frigate/Cruisers that are similar in type and performance. Something akin to what Angros mentioned in a different thread.

Percirien Light Carrier -> Sova
Krosov Siege Frigate -> Marza

Where as the Dunov and Akkan are two ships I think should be readily available earlier then any of the other ships. And finally the Kol should be the top of the food chain, with some pre-reqs in Auto-Cannon/Gauss technology.

The capital ship factory is fine as a Stage 2 tech, but it should only open for the Akkan and the Dunov initially. Later stage research would then unlock the rest of the ships. The argument that they need to be available early to "level up" isn't valid because there's plenty of Insurgents/Pirates/Other player battles throughout a game to level up several ships several times. And from what I've read so far they aren't meant to be the bulk of the fleets, but a supplement to spearhead fleets in to combat. Frigates and Cruisers are the bulk, the core.

That aside, there's a couple other things that I think needs some extra thought.
Namely the techs that increases Crystal and Metal mining. For starters they are placed too high up in the tech stages, and secondly they are far too costly on crystals to warrent researching them.
Something that's been done in previous games is to make one cost more of the opposite resource. Say Crystal production increases costs more Metal and little Crystal to research. Metal mining on the other hand requires more Crystal and little Metal. However that isn't optimal as, again, crystal is so limited especially early on.
So striking a balance between Crystal/Metal expenditure is better.

That's my initial thoughts.

A re-ordering of the combat tech tree is definitely needed. And I'll leave the devs to figure out the optimal setup.

Lets get the ball rolling people. Chime in with your feedback.