The moo2 research system was "linear". If your focus was on range and speed for your ships, you have only to research in that specific folders.

The moo4 research system is more like a simple matrix; sometimes you must pre-research in other folders.
So if you do not want to research new speed folders; you still have to do this, because this folder unlocks new folders with innovations you want to get.

To get more tech choices, you have to rewrite the whole tech tree!

I am very happy with the form of the tech tree with those new mod-ideas :)

Just my 2 cts...

I wish all races had their own technology or something like moo3, where is the General tech tree, but each race is only available part of development and every game this set of technologies is changing... But, I think, not everyone is fit... and technically I'm not sure that this is possible...😳

I'd like to see some "unique" racial techs as well.

While I can see difficulty in that, is there a way to "weight" AI tech probability by race? For example, the Alkari should want to pursue faster engines over larger ships - though they will (more slowly) get larger vessels as well.

This alone would help drastically to increase the "flavor" of each AI.

I'd like to see tech trading (not treaties - just trading of actual tech) much less likely between races. At the least I believe it should be weighted more in that to "get" a tech you need to give up significantly more than you are getting. Any "unique" racial tech should not be tradeable.

With that said - and I know this is "off topic" in a way regarding tech - but I'd love to see tech spying be both "targetted" and "segmented". By this I mean since you have a list of tech the aliens have - you should be able to define which one you want to go after. That is the "Targetted" part.

The "segmented" is that it should not be possible to gain a tech after one successful spy mission. Rather, the higher "rated" the tech, the more successful number of spy missions you should have to run.

A basic tech like hydroponic farms might take 2 spy missions to succeed. Something like a stellar converter or high level shield - could take 5 or 6 because the spy could only get parts of the information at a time.

If "unique" racial tech was added - those should take like 10 successful missions (though they need not be consecutive). I am not sure that the above would be possible with the tools we currently have though....

@ fatheryoucrave

1. To give unique racial techs is possible in general. For example: in the same way you get the "toxic condenser 50" as a +50% production-perk-race via "Bio tech", you can assign a unique perk to each race and use it as a startpoint for getting unique techs, when succesfully researching a new tech folder.
I dont think that it is possible to create new techs...but with modifying the former ones you will get same result.

Example: with the "Alkari-perk" this race will always get engins with the stats from the next generation.

To do this for all races will be a very big amount of work!


2. I cant say anything usefull to your sugestions with spys; cause I play without them.

3. Hope you can understand my "school-english"... ;)

By essential techs I was referring to things like battle pods, terraforming, robo miners, and toxic processors. MoO2 seemed great with having tech choices every level, but in reality there were some that you just always chose, like battle pods, robo miners, and research labs, so you just always missed out on the rest of the techs unless you were creative, a spying race, or traded for techs. Plus because the AI chose techs randomly, you always got a better assortment of techs than them, which would be an issue if we made such techs into choices for MoO4 as well.

@Stoker182 The problem with using a race perk for race unique techs is that the techs don't show up in the tech tree. I'm looking into that...

What if you added tiers of those "essential" techs, same as with other essential techs such as armor and engines? For instance, add "expansion pods" as a primitive form of battle pods, and something else as an advanced form?

Or, rebalance them so they're no longer essential? Increase cost of battle pods, add additional pollution to robo-miners, that sort of thing...

I can't create another ship module that has the same effect as battle pods actually. The game is hard coded to only accept battle pods giving a space bonus. Trying to apply the space bonus to another module has no effect. Robo miners already adds a lot of pollution, so I'd rather not mess with that. Anyway, I have rearranged the tech tree a bit to give more choices for the next update on Friday. Here's some additional choices you'll have to make now:

• Tritanium Armor | Merculite Missiles
  
• Advanced Data Center | Crust Prospecting
  
• Global DNA Scanner | Galactic Security Agency (new building, empire unique, +5% empire security)
  
• Displacement Device | Battle Scanner
  
• Fighter Bays | Survival Pods
  
• Graviton Cannon | Class III Shields
  
• Phasors | Subspace Communications
  
• Heavy Fighter Bays | Advanced Missile Base
  
• Hyperspace Sensors | Hyperspace Communications

I'm also increasing the cost of Creative to 4 points to reflect the added benefit. I might think of additional choices too. Maybe Anti Matter Torpedoes | Warp Dissipater.

As I see, You don`t fix the small old bug: MINIATURIZATION_CANNON_xxx_NAME & DESCRIPTION lost in your .CSV file...

Those lines are included in the game's .csv files already, so I didn't need to add them. They display correctly in game.

If unique technologies are attached to perks in the future, I would like to suggest one to address a pet peeve of mine: Stellar Conversion.

It is handy to be able to recreate planets, but the process entails "gifting" worlds to someone, blowing up that world, and then reconstructing it in the hopes of getting something better. (real) Time consuming, relations-souring, and just plain nonsense for anyone sane.

I would like the Terraforming trait to have two unique technologies that result from having it: Enrich Planet and Enlarge Planet. That would add some long term benefits to having the perk, and make a race with it more distinct.

Also, would it be possible for hybrid unique technologies to be unlocked if multiple perks are taken? EG: Population Growth + Engineering = Increased population capacity.

I'm not able to create techs that alter a planet's mineral richness or size, since that's not programmed into the game. The modding system is limited in that it can only use existing parameters, not add new features.

As for the hybrid traits, the best I could do would be to add those combinations to the custom race screen, kind of like how Darloks have the shapeshifter combo and so forth. Space on the custom race screen is limited, so I would only be able to do very few such traits, and I'm not sure they'd be balanced because you're basically getting points for free. Also I can't add a trait to increase population capacity.

Drat. I was hoping that MOO4 would be more flexible than this. :(

The devs were planning to add more extensive modding support, but there's little chance of that happening now.

Originally posted by Spud Dastardly:

The devs were planning to add more extensive modding support, but there's little chance of that happening now.

Anything that we could do to increase the likelihood? Say, buy additional DLC? :)

Probably not. I've heard some things, which I can't share, and the situation with the devs is not good.