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Gravship Reasonable Tech

Gravship Reasonable Tech — a minimalist balance patch that restores logic and historical progression to the gravship research.

In vanilla, the base gravship research costs only 300 tech points — cheaper than Fishing (from the same DLC)! This feels like a "pay-to-play" shortcut and completely breaks the intended tech progression.

This mod fixes that by aligning research costs with real-world historical context:

• Tier 1 (2000 ← was 300) — matches humanity’s first crewed spaceflight (Yuri Gagarin, 1961). This is an achievement of the industrial era: it requires advanced industry, but not sci-fi tech.
  
• Tier 2 (3000 ← was 1200) and Tier 3 (4000 ← was 2000) — go beyond current human capabilities. These represent "early space-age" technologies, fitting for late-game or post-industrial colonies.

The mod adds no new mechanics, breaks no scenarios, save to add and delete from save, and has no dependencies (aside from the obvious Odessey DLC). It’s just one XML patch that makes the game more coherent.

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Q: How is this different from Progression: Gravship?
A: Progression: Gravship locks the gravship event until you reach a specific tech tier — a great choice if you want strict progression.
However, requiring players to be at a "space" tech level (where vanilla lets you build an interstellar ship) just to achieve orbital flight feels excessive. In reality, the first human spaceflight happened during the industrial age, without nanotech or AI.
My mod keeps your freedom: you can start building the gravship just like in vanilla — but now it’s a meaningful milestone, not a 300-point formality.

Q: I disagree with the new research costs!
A: You can open the mod folder and find patch.xml — it contains all research costs and tech level requirements. Yes, the entire mod is literally one file, and you’re free to tweak it to your preference.

If this mod is used alongside any other mod that changes gravship research - nothing will break — the one lower in your mod load order will simply override the gravship tech values.