I do maximize research, always - but who honestly upgrades units 32 times, ever?
Superfluous for the teching attacker perhaps, but a lagging defender may be happy to have a weapon ready with only 1-2 points less combat value then an attacker.With the large number of incremental upgrades, the lagging defender suffers more, because while he's trying to make the jump from the Gatling Laser to the Missile, the teching attacker has the opportunity to grab the chaos gun, then the fusion laser, then the tachyon bolt before he reaches the Plasma Shard. If the attacker has to jump from the Chaos Gun to the Plasma Shard, that's a much longer period in which his arms don't effectively improve.
You missed laser weapons :D Speaking of which:I like that as well; in my imagined SMAC successor there would only be like four or five weapons in total, and you'd get access to them fairly early in the game, but as you tech up you can improve the weapons you already have instead of just replacing them with new types.
When I read GURPS Alpha Centauri, they differentiated the weapons. You still had folks using impact weapons along with Plasma Shards and missiles. I would prefer each "item" have attributes and properties: strengths and weaknesses instead of just a higher number.
You missed laser weapons :D Speaking of which:I like that as well; in my imagined SMAC successor there would only be like four or five weapons in total, and you'd get access to them fairly early in the game, but as you tech up you can improve the weapons you already have instead of just replacing them with new types.
When I read GURPS Alpha Centauri, they differentiated the weapons. You still had folks using impact weapons along with Plasma Shards and missiles. I would prefer each "item" have attributes and properties: strengths and weaknesses instead of just a higher number.
Well here is how I figured it could work:
You've got four weapon classes: Ballstic, Explosive, Particle and Laser.
As you tech up, certain techs will add a % bonus to your attach for certain weapon classes.
More importantly, you can equip units with Advanced Weapons abilities for each type which gives a much bigger boost to its power, but at the expense of one of your ability slots as well as making the unit more expensive and harder to replace. That way fielding super powerful weapons like singularity lasers incurs a much heavier cost on you compared with just sending out grunts with laser rifles.
But that is likely beyond the capabilities of a simple SMACX mod without someone cracking the .exe wide open. What I'm theorizing is modding the existing game to remove weapons from it. I know it's possible to select which tech an existing weapon goes to, but what about disabling them altogether?