Poke some more holes

[Reformations]

Keep in mind that I'm a devil's advocate by nature, so when someone proposes a rule I'm compelled to try and poke holes in it

Now, who does that remind me of?  It's on the tip of my tongue, probably someone who yammers on and on about all the things that might go wrong with crit mechanics or something, dunno, I'll think of it eventually...

I enjoyed your comments on overcrowding and non-sentinent wildlife.  Here are some others.  Poke away.

Cross Ladder Research

Cross-ladder research:  Some techs could appear in multiple tech areas depending on race.  The conditions would be: 
1)  The tech would have been generated in its original tech ladder already, and then have x% chance to appear in the alternate.  Maybe 50%?
2)  If a player researches the tech in the alternate field, it does not increase the (max) tech level of the original or alternate field, even if it is the highest device in that field so far.  It does increase the original tech field level by 1. 
3)   The tech level (and rungs) are not changed when completing research on an alt-tech.  If the alt-tech was the only option in the original ladder rung, a new rung is displayed in the original field (but tech level not changed until the original field completes its OWN project).


For example, Sakkra could find "Improved robotic controls K" showing up in their planetology ladder. The (rough) logic being that the species needs to adapt as much as the factory does for controlling multiple factories.
Meklar could discover terraforming technology in their computer field.
Alkari could discover ship deflector shield technology in their propulsion ladder.
Mrrshan could discover armor technology in their weapons field (hey, you gotta shoot those test weapons at something!).

I love the random tech ladders of MoO1.  This toggelable mod would add some more variety to some races.  These are buffs for the most part as their is no drawback to having an alt-tech showing up in a ladder.  You can just ignore it and research it in its original field.  Because of the requirement that the tech must be present in the original ladder, we are not adding more tech options--just 2 different ways to get a tech that would have been there anyways.


Creative/Omniscient


The ability to see future rungs in a field's tech ladder.  You cannot actually research those options yet but you know what will be available later in the game.  This can be given as a racial attribute and vary by depth of future rungs or even preset rungs.  Mrrshan can always see 3 weapon rungs into the future perhaps.  Maybe Meklar start by knowing what their final 5 rungs of Computers will be.  Maybe Psilons start knowing the first 2 rungs of every field (but still must research the first rung first).

This effect could also be attached to discovering an artifacts-type planet or some sort of galaxy-wide GNN event.  


Sliders

I think some races could have bonuses/penalties implemented through how they interact with planetary sliders.

Psilons, due to peaceful nature, do not want a planet's sole purpose to be building ships.  Therefore, ship building can only make up 80% of a planet's output.  The rest must be spent on research/industry/defense/terraforming.  (This is nerf to ultra rich's for sure.  Psilon war machine will have to get more individual planets involve in ship making).

Alkari: Learn by doing.  15% of resources spent on ships slider is added to research slider for that planet.  The alkari are obsessed with ships and they even get to push scientific progress forward by building them.

Mrrshan: Military Industrial Complex. 75% of defense slider (missiles and shields) is added to industry slider. If factories are maxed this results in 'free tax payer money' by Industry funneling straight to planetary reserves.  

Meklar: Economy of Scale. Industry slider cannot go below 10%. However, any allocation to Industry sees an additional 20% return. For example, a slider at 50% would receive an additional (50)*.2 = 10% towards industry. This makes Meklar the most efficient factory builders but hurts them slightly when factory construction is finished. (The 10% required would then feed into planetary resources--but would arguably be better spent on ships/research).

Less Risk/Reward spying

Either darlok specific or more general.  I've thought the binary reward system from spying meant the penalties were also harsh.  Unfortunately this is less of a mod and changes how spying works at a lower level.

Failed attempts at spying may result in adding that particular tech to your ladder (stealing blueprints) so that your scientists can research it later.  Less failed attempts may add RP towards that particular tech, after 3-4 partial attempts you may accumulate enough RP on it through espionage to complete it.  

Some racial traits, perhaps customizable (ei moo2)

Bulrathi ground combat bonus gets swamped by tech later on.  This approach would cap the enemy's tech ground combat bonus to whatever the Bulrathi TECH bonus is.  This does not include the bulrathi racial bonus or defender bonus.  In other words, no matter the tech situation, Bulrathi would always have the upper hand.  Essentially, Bulrathi are able to completely ignore ground combat tech and rely on brute strength.


Mrrshan spies use their WEAPON tech level for spying rolls instead of Computer tech level.  Mrrshan piss everyone off anyways.  Might as well give them a spying bonus to use while fighting.


Sakkra get overcrowded planets (mentioned in other thread).

[RefSteel]

So, I mean if you just want holes poked...

- I think all of these changes add extra rules/stuff to parts of the game that don't need them! I am a rules minimalist and don't like this. Also I am an old curmudgeon who loves original Orion.

- I feel like cross-ladder research reduces the impact (or restricts correct choices) of a key strategic decision (how much to invest in each tech field) while also reducing the importance of the research strengths and weaknesses of different races.

- Additional knowledge about the tech tree makes tech choices much easier and/or restricted when the information matters at all. When I used to play MoO2, I would play as Uncreative with a variant that I was not allowed to click and check ahead in my tree specifically to make the choices more interesting to me.

- Slider restrictions just reduce player agency. Also, "no more than 80% can be spent on ships" doesn't really hurt URs much; they just dump the rest into IND (even ignoring cleanup costs as in DG). Also the Meklar restriction is actually just a pure bonus if there are no rounding errors , also because of the reserves, with the exception of Poor and especially UP worlds, at which it would be loathsomely painful. Also the Alkari get an enormous bonus because Colony Ships exist. Also, even though they're the consensus weakest race, the Mrrshans aren't as weak as you think they are.

- Your espionage system has greater realism going for it, but significantly reduces the thrill of a lucky hit while also making espionage more powerful overall. Note in the game's espionage system you never get to choose the tech you want to steal (unless you happen to know it's the only tech your target has that you do not in a field that's available to you.)

- So literally the only way to have a chance against the Bulrathi would be to have a billion times their population and flood them with 300 transports every turn, while obviating the value of 10 different techs (and a part of the value of armor too) for fighting as or against them? Luckily at least the flavor of this change, with bears' muscles more than compensating for literally absorption-shielded power neutronium exoskeletons with inbuilt fusion cannons, is completely horrible too!

- Using Weapon instead of computers for spying first of all turns Mrrshans into semi-Darloks and second of all probably makes things worse for them, because even with better weapons tech ability, they still want to push for scanners and robotic controls.

- Overcrowding just makes micro worse. Note that adding restrictions on player actions to force micro reduction almost always unintentionally increases micro, but definitely reduces player agency, particularly for players who weren't micromanaging in the first place.

Uhhhh ... I think that's enough holes for now? I actually quite like your spying idea, though it would need some work to balance it and make sure it was fun to play with! The Creative/Omniscient thing could be interesting too; you could have a cost associated with it, like teching "see the next rung ahead in this field" instead of an actual tech, at some cost in RP. Overcrowding might also work as a tech/racial-bonus/planetary-bonus/something if pop would never naturally grow there and it just allowed excess transports to arrive safely (and do nothing) instead of dying. I genuinely loathe some of the other ideas, but hole-poking aside, those three seem like they have potential to me.

[Reformations]

Great feedback.

Agree that the cross ladder stuff is certainly not very friendly to new players who aren't familiar with regular locations of tech. I've often thought of *new* tech (but that could quickly get out of hand) so this was thinking of ways to keep the current bits but new ways to access them.

I hadn't thought about the reduction in Agency aspect of sliders. The story behind this was how the psilon research bonus goes somewhat un-noticed by a novice player. I thought a simple GUI change could have a different colored (glowy?) bar (maybe like a highlight) alongside the research one. Whenever research was allocated on psilon planet this alternate bar would also creep up (at 50%) reminding the player that they are getting a 1.5x output from research. (Instead of just seeing 150rp instead of 100). Silicoids have a version of this where new players can easily see that they are not spending on pollution. I think that visual distinction of what race you are playing is quite nice. This then led into -- "What if Alkari got bonus research (as indicated by the highlighted bar) whenever investing in Ships?"

Hah, you didn't like the Bulrathi "We don't need no stinking guns" suggestion? Their base bonus could be reduced to something like +10 to make it slightly more reasonable. However, this is the opposite version of other ideas where bulrathi made better use groundpounding tech. (Tech that added +10 to other races would add +12 to bears, for example). I felt that that made them TOO reliant on researching ground tech and then thought about swinging in the other direction (letting them ignore it). Any thoughts on how to keep ground combat bonus competitive late game when tech bonuses get 1.5-2x larger than the original?

Do you think it is possible/fun to balance a race around a single tech field? (ie Mrrshan focusing 50% on weapon tech).What about basing mrrshan population production on weapons instead of planetology?

[RefSteel]

Finally getting back to this. To your questions:

When tech bonuses get 1.5-2x larger than the original, Bulrathi ground combat bonus remains competitive by researching the same tech and still having a huge advantage. Or by achieving lesser tech - enough to give them a bonus just .5-1x larger than the original - and still be equal to their more-advanced opponents. Why is this in any way a bad thing? One option to be sure Bulrathi can always be competitive is to give them a higher probability of having gropo-style techs in their tree (the way the Psilons have a higher probability than other races of having any given tech in their tree) - but also be aware that the Bulrathi can also steal other races' gropo techs by invading them while the tech gap is still relatively narrow, thereby preventing it from ever getting too wide.

It is possible to balance just about anything if you really, really want to. I do not think it is fun to balance a race to ~require focusing on a single tech field for optimal play. Choosing a field for research focus is an interesting choice that must be made again and again throughout each game, and (with the exception of early planetology and propulsion tech, and even these can vary based on the map) demand different choices in every different game and game situation. Why would you want to change this? MoO doesn't have many moving parts. If race largely decides planetary slider allocation and the best tech spending practices, what does the player even do in the game apart from occasionally designing a combat fleet? If you do want to mess with the research system, I'd suggest the same thing as for the Bulrathi: Give each race certain tech types (or tech fields, e.g. the ones in which they are excellent) that they are more likely to have available in their tree than other races. This is something the player can plan around while still needing to do the research and preserving some uncertainty.

[Reformations]

Actually for a long time I thought %available techs was tied to excellent/poor rating. I was disappointed when it wasn't the case.