Research improvement ("leveling up")

With the recent update of research tree into a web and inclusion of branches, research "levels" weren't updated, and it's a bit unclear how will they work, or if they will be included at all.

For new members or for old ones wanting to refresh their memory, improving (or leveling up) a technology increases it's effectivity, increasing it's bonuses and allowing FPs/TOs to be smaller or more powerful.

The current research concept has too much Inventions to level up each of them, but on the other side, leveling entire branches is too general to allow for more significant gameplay value.

So, should we include leveling? If so, how will it work? Discuss.

What's wrong with it working normally, but with inventions? Each research has a level, which doesn't affect the inventions, just the bonuses that research gives you (assuming they still do with inventions, I don't see why not), and some researches, when levelled, unlock inventions (or more of them, possibly better versions of the previous invention).

Maybe I'm missing something, but I would have thought that would work.

Maybe I'm just being dumb now, but what are those researches you talk about? Are they Inventions? Breakthroughs? Or the whole branches containing Inventions and Breakthroughs?

Or are there any researches in additions to these three things above?

Commander Keen wrote:

Maybe I'm just being dumb now, but what are those researches you talk about? Are they Inventions? Breakthroughs? Or the whole branches containing Inventions and Breakthroughs?

Or are there any researches in additions to these three things above?

Um... The actual content of the tree... The things that aren't inventions, that affect your civilisation. Things like writing, and maths. They're supposed to give your civilisation bonuses in production and efficiency, and things like that, aren't they? Is my idea of what the research tree is outdated?

...I know I just said tree... I should have said web. I mean web. I'm not that outdated.

Hang on, let me take a look at the last post, I might not have been very clear...

The Uteen wrote:

Each research has a level, which doesn't affect the inventions, just the bonuses that research gives you As in, when you level up a research, it becomes more advanced, and so increases its effectiveness in your civilisation, therefore giving higher bonuses. Maybe that's not what levelling does. Did. Well, whatever it did, it continues to do.

and some researches, when levelled, unlock inventions (or more of them, possibly better versions of the previous invention). Some might not give you an invention at first, but do when you level them. Levelling a research could get you better versions of an invention. Or they give you different inventions entirely.

Maybe I'm missing something, but I would have thought that would work.

Why can't levels be attached to everything? It would all be behind the scenes, and the player doesn't even have to know about it if they don't want to (options - notifications - hide/show research leveling).

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Um... The actual content of the tree... The things that aren't inventions, that affect your civilisation. Things like writing, and maths. They're supposed to give your civilisation bonuses in production and efficiency, and things like that, aren't they? Is my idea of what the research tree is outdated?

Maths and similar aren't inventions? Until now I thought all researches are either Inventions or Breakthroughs. Maybe you meant FPs?

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Why can't levels be attached to everything? It would all be behind the scenes, and the player doesn't even have to know about it if they don't want to (options - notifications - hide/show research leveling).

How would it work then? More specificaly, how would levels be attained? The player should be able to put effort into leveling up certaing branches (or inventions).

Commander Keen wrote:

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Um... The actual content of the tree... The things that aren't inventions, that affect your civilisation. Things like writing, and maths. They're supposed to give your civilisation bonuses in production and efficiency, and things like that, aren't they? Is my idea of what the research tree is outdated?

Maths and similar aren't inventions? Until now I thought all researches are either Inventions or Breakthroughs. Maybe you meant FPs?

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Why can't levels be attached to everything? It would all be behind the scenes, and the player doesn't even have to know about it if they don't want to (options - notifications - hide/show research leveling).

How would it work then? More specificaly, how would levels be attained? The player should be able to put effort into leveling up certaing branches (or inventions).

It would be done by using related TOs, or continuing research along branches that the Research or invention was on. Eg. researching animal interaction would improve gathering.

Commander Keen wrote:

Quote :

Um... The actual content of the tree... The things that aren't inventions, that affect your civilisation. Things like writing, and maths. They're supposed to give your civilisation bonuses in production and efficiency, and things like that, aren't they? Is my idea of what the research tree is outdated?

Maths and similar aren't inventions? Until now I thought all researches are either Inventions or Breakthroughs. Maybe you meant FPs?

I thought inventions were FPs. Inventing FPs... Sorry, I've misunderstood by the looks of it.

...I don't think there's a page on the wiki explaining what the terms mean, so could someone explain exactly what Inventions and Breakthroughs are? And where FPs come into it?

The Uteen wrote:

Commander Keen wrote:

Quote :

Um... The actual content of the tree... The things that aren't inventions, that affect your civilisation. Things like writing, and maths. They're supposed to give your civilisation bonuses in production and efficiency, and things like that, aren't they? Is my idea of what the research tree is outdated?

Maths and similar aren't inventions? Until now I thought all researches are either Inventions or Breakthroughs. Maybe you meant FPs?

I thought inventions were FPs. Inventing FPs... Sorry, I've misunderstood by the looks of it.

...I don't think there's a page on the wiki explaining what the terms mean, so could someone explain exactly what Inventions and Breakthroughs are? And where FPs come into it?

with reasearch lvling you mean something like this

you reasearch 1 medicine. the lvl 2 becomes availiable but it cost more and may need other reasearches be done before i becomes availiable. if yes i like it

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...I don't think there's a page on the wiki explaining what the terms mean, so could someone explain exactly what Inventions and Breakthroughs are? And where FPs come into it?

Inventions make up the bulk of the research web. Researching them can give new FPs or other bonuses, but they can't unlock new research branches. Not all Inventions will be discovered, some will be randomly skipped by the game to allow for more variety between nations.

Breakthroughs are like Inventions, except they can unlock new branches, and that makes them way more important than ordinary Inventions. Breakthroughs will also be always discovered, so you won't be deprived of any important area of research.

FPs can be unlocked by any Invention or Breakthrough.

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with reasearch lvling you mean something like this

you reasearch 1 medicine. the lvl 2 becomes availiable but it cost more and may need other reasearches be done before i becomes availiable. if yes i like it

Something like that, but without any prerequisites. Leveling up just gives the research greater bonus. We already have huge loads of Inventions, and complicating it by differentiating every level would be hell both for players and designers.

Commander Keen wrote:

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...I don't think there's a page on the wiki explaining what the terms mean, so could someone explain exactly what Inventions and Breakthroughs are? And where FPs come into it?

Inventions make up the bulk of the research web. Researching them can give new FPs or other bonuses, but they can't unlock new research branches. Not all Inventions will be discovered, some will be randomly skipped by the game to allow for more variety between nations.

Breakthroughs are like Inventions, except they can unlock new branches, and that makes them way more important than ordinary Inventions. Breakthroughs will also be always discovered, so you won't be deprived of any important area of research.

FPs can be unlocked by any Invention or Breakthrough.

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with reasearch lvling you mean something like this

you reasearch 1 medicine. the lvl 2 becomes availiable but it cost more and may need other reasearches be done before i becomes availiable. if yes i like it

Something like that, but without any prerequisites. Leveling up just gives the research greater bonus. We already have huge loads of Inventions, and complicating it by differentiating every level would be hell both for players and designers.

about the players part i dont thing that you are right specialy in a game that is complex like this.having lvled reasearches without prerequisites will be easily exploited(by reasearching only one reasearch again and again .also it will feel a bit strange. i dont say that every lvl will have a prerequisite but i dont thing the opposite will be good. ifor example in a game i play in order to reasearch lvl 1 urban planning you have to have lvl 10 architecture(example) .the same goes for lvl 2.at lvl 5 you have to have 15 lvl architecture. of course this is just an oppinion

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having lvled reasearches without prerequisites will be easily exploited(by reasearching only one reasearch again and again

Researching one research again and again will slow down research of new technologies. If you wish to sacrifice that, you can.

Also, the more you level something up, the harder will it be to level it up. At some point, leveling up will become disadvantageous.

Ok, here's a sum-up of my original idea for levels:

Levels are simply just different advancements of a single (invention?/technology? Don't know what we're referring to the things that get researched as now.) Basically, they are different advancements of a stop on the tech tree/web/whatever.

Here's an example:
Cannon
has three levels- each level increases reliability of the cannon.

Basically, once you've researched something, you don't immediately have the best version of it. You start out with the simplest form, then build and improve on that with research.

I visualize it like this- you have the network of interconnected technologies/researches/whatever - each of these is represented as a small flat block, with lines drawn towards others to show their correlation. A technology with levels has many blocks stacked on top of each other, and each of these can have different connections than the bottom block, representing the simplest form of the tech.

I'm not sure if that was very clear. Please tell me if you didn't understand it.

~sciocont wrote:

Levels are simply just different advancements of a single (invention?/technology? Don't know what we're referring to the things that get researched as now.) Basically, they are different advancements of a stop on the tech tree/web/whatever.

Who's updating the little dictionary that we had hanging out somewhere on the forum? I feel like someone needs to before we all get confused.

~sciocont wrote:

Basically, once you've researched something, you don't immediately have the best version of it. You start out with the simplest form, then build and improve on that with research.

I understand this, but have no idea how we would implement it, save with a lot of random numbers for failure rates, then animating each failure and figuring it's probability for every level.

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Who's updating the little dictionary that we had hanging out somewhere on the forum? I feel like someone needs to before we all get confused.

It's on the wiki now. Feel free to find either the original dictionary thread and post your changes. I'll get them on the wiki.

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Cannon
has three levels- each level increases reliability of the cannon.

Reliability isn't the best example, because there's no nearly no way how to simulate it without inducing a lot of micromanagement. Computers would be a better example, when you first start with machines big as houses and have to level up to get microprocessors (Effectivity would be increased with each level).

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I visualize it like this- you have the network of interconnected technologies/researches/whatever - each of these is represented as a small flat block, with lines drawn towards others to show their correlation. A technology with levels has many blocks stacked on top of each other, and each of these can have different connections than the bottom block, representing the simplest form of the tech.

Honestly, I don't understand it much. Maybe a graphical example could help?

Commander Keen wrote:

Quote :

Who's updating the little dictionary that we had hanging out somewhere on the forum? I feel like someone needs to before we all get confused.

It's on the wiki now. Feel free to find either the original dictionary thread and post your changes. I'll get them on the wiki.

Quote :

Cannon
has three levels- each level increases reliability of the cannon.

Reliability isn't the best example, because there's no nearly no way how to simulate it without inducing a lot of micromanagement. Computers would be a better example, when you first start with machines big as houses and have to level up to get microprocessors (Effectivity would be increased with each level).

Quote :

I visualize it like this- you have the network of interconnected technologies/researches/whatever - each of these is represented as a small flat block, with lines drawn towards others to show their correlation. A technology with levels has many blocks stacked on top of each other, and each of these can have different connections than the bottom block, representing the simplest form of the tech.

Honestly, I don't understand it much. Maybe a graphical example could help?

I'll work on a graphical example.

Guys, remember that technology advances exponentially. It's like an Exponential Graph. So, basically, in real life, technologies become EASIER to research, not harder. Your idea of making the Level Ups harder to achieve is therefore useless, no offense. It should be that Level Ups become EASIER to achieve.

Exponential growth is taken care of directly in the web. Improving one set piece of technology gets harder and harder as you have to use more complicated methods. Exponential technology growth depends on developing totally new solutions (in comparison, leveling up corresponds to improving the solution).

Dudeman wrote:

Guys, remember that technology advances exponentially. It's like an Exponential Graph. So, basically, in real life, technologies become EASIER to research, not harder. Your idea of making the Level Ups harder to achieve is therefore useless, no offense. It should be that Level Ups become EASIER to achieve.

i dont agree you you (some % at least) the more good is ssomething the more hard you will make it better( as i said at some % you are right.)

This is my idea for the "levels" Each tech is represented by a box. Each column of boxes represents the linear progression of a single technology, such as computers. Some levels are only accessible after other advancements are made, some levels unlock new technologies.

~sciocont wrote:

This is my idea for the "levels" Each tech is represented by a box. Each column of boxes represents the linear progression of a single technology, such as computers. Some levels are only accessible after other advancements are made, some levels unlock new technologies.

I prefer the idea of leveling being separate from the research tree and mostly kept out of sight and mind myself. But that's just my personal opinion.

So do I.

US_of_Alaska wrote:

~sciocont wrote:

This is my idea for the "levels" Each tech is represented by a box. Each column of boxes represents the linear progression of a single technology, such as computers. Some levels are only accessible after other advancements are made, some levels unlock new technologies.

I prefer the idea of leveling being separate from the research tree and mostly kept out of sight and mind myself. But that's just my personal opinion.

what do you mean outside

US_of_Alaska wrote:

~sciocont wrote:

This is my idea for the "levels" Each tech is represented by a box. Each column of boxes represents the linear progression of a single technology, such as computers. Some levels are only accessible after other advancements are made, some levels unlock new technologies.

I prefer the idea of leveling being separate from the research tree and mostly kept out of sight and mind myself. But that's just my personal opinion.

Having to level a tech before certain other techs can be researched is probably more realistic, but an auto-levelling would be nice. It would make it a lot easier, but people have their own preferences on how hard they want a game to be.

Autolevelling? What would that look like?