2E Tech Questions

[nimrodd]

As a limitation, I would also suggest that a special tech could be researched no more that once every 5 Tech Levels, to keep every body from researching special techs at the beginning and making empires even more differentiated technologically.

I had another thought on "limiting" special techs.

Looking at the Tech Advancement cost, here is the relevant section:

The number of tech points that a power must purchase before it receives a new tech advance is found by adding its total Census to the number of colonies it currently controls and multiplying the resulting sum by 10. An empire with 18 Census and 5 colonies would therefore have a tech advancement cost of (18 + 5) x 10 = 230 TP.

This is what it costs to either go up a Tech Level or to get a Special Tech. It doesn't matter whether you have 1 or 100 Special Techs, going up one TL costs the same. And this bothered me a little, as I would think that there would be more overhead on raising the tech level of those 100 Special Techs, on top of the normal cost.

What if for each additional Special Tech (beyond whatever ones you begin with at TL 0) there was an additional cost to raise your Tech Level, but not to purchase a new Special Tech.

I had 2 different ideas about the extra cost, and we will look at 2 empires; Empire A from the example text above [(18 + 5) x 10 = 230 TP], plus 20 Special Techs, and Empire B, with only 2 systems with a total Census of 10 [(10 + 2) x 10 = 120 TP].
1) +5% per Special Tech
A - (18 + 5) x 10 = 230 x (1 + (20 x .05)) = 230 x 2 = 460 TP
B - (10 + 2) x 10 = 120 x (1 + (20 x .05)) = 120 x 2 = 240 TP
2) Change the calculation from (Census + Colonies) x 10 to (Census + Colonies + #Special Tech) x 10
A - (18 + 5 + 20) x 10 = 430 TP
B - (10 + 2 + 20) x 10 = 320 TP

I lean more towards option 1, since this leaves it scaled to where larger empires pay more.

Again, I am suggesting this because I would like to see a way of making all the empires different, without artificial limits (as I suggested in the quote at the beginning).

[countercheck]

Nimrod,

I see what you're getting at, but I worry this will in fact limit diversity rather than increase it. If the cost of researching special techs doesn't increase, there's no incentive not to diversify your tech base and imitate the winning strategies of your enemies, other than increasing the cost of developing mainline tech down the line. I'd prefer to see it the other way around, with special techs restricting access to further special techs, or perhaps tech level + special techs modifying all research, both special and standard... That at least would account for the Ancient's stagnation... it just costs too many tech points to buy the shiny new special tech!

[Tyrel Lohr]

MarkNorfolk: I have a feeling there are quite a few players that probably won't use the tech or unit design rules, preferring instead to use whatever system ties directly into their tactical system, or else a separate availability chart. While I was working on my 1/7000 versions of some FASA Star Trek ships the last week of September I got to thinking that if I ever wanted to play another "early years" Star Trek campaign I would probably eschew those rules, too, in favor of using the original 1E In-Service Date tech rules that just advances you one year per tech advance. For that reason I am going to add that as another option in the Campaign Guide, as I do think it will be a popular option for settings where the units are already all designed.

nimrodd: That would be one way to dissuade players from researching special technologies.

I think for the purposes of field specific tech research, it is going to be easiest to just tie each special technology to a research field and have the empire's tech level in that research field affect its miniaturization.

countercheck: Many of the special technologies will end up with prerequisites that require you to research them in a specific order, but I hadn't thought about having any of them be mutually exclusive. I'll have to keep that in mind.


As an update on the tech rules, the decision has been made to move all of the special technologies to the Engineering Manual. The core unit abilities that are currently lumped in with the special technologies will be renamed to special abilities, or else turned into basic unit statistics. This change was prompted by several things, including a need to resolve some issues with Command rating.

[countercheck]

My idea wasn't so much that they should be mutually exclusive, but that they get more expensive the more you have... but mutually exclusive can be interesting too!