Technology values and chaining

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Question: How important are technology values for mod?

I understand they help chose target technology in blind research when player select some research priorities. This is as far as they go. They are not used for targeted research. And even for blind research selection they are of limited use. They sure help you pick a technology among available ones. However, list of available technologies is not available to you. Some technologies ready to be discover may not be available for pickup due to weird formula obscuring 1/3 of them in a not clear fashion that is not humanly possible to follow deep into the game. Setting research priorities let you more likely to research corresponding value technologies but not guarantees it. It is not even give you a clear path though not yet researched tech tree levels either as any technology prerequisites may have completely different values blocking selection engine from reaching it. All in all it does change research sequence but this change is extremely difficult to visualize and not straightforward. One would need to keep a tech tree on a table along with obscuring formula handy and change priorities every turn to be able to fine direct their research. I guess this is not the way it was designed.

In light of the above do you think it makes sense in fine balancing technologies values at all? Also would it make sense to chain some similar technologies together to build some sort of ancestry for similarly valued groups? Like to make sure that at least one prerequisite is of the same of similar value? Of course, it doesn't solve the problem I outlined above completely but, at least it makes such grouped technologies more reachable. And even in this case, it does not make much sense to me either as most of the same color technologies could actually bring drastically different outcome and specific game value. For example both terraforming and native technologies are green. However, terraforming and native units are completely different game concepts you may want only one of them when you meant "green". So even if you are able to direct blind research more or less effectively, half of what you get will be not what you wanted.

[bvanevery]

I spent 18 months balancing my tech weights.  Yes in my opinion it is worth doing, and yes the results are highly predictable from the game designer's standpoint.  Not the player's.

One thing you gotta watch out for, is that putting 0s in something creates a hard barrier to it being researched by that focus.  For instance, when I've had Information Networks as a pure Discover tech.  Only the AI factions with a Discover research focus would figure it out, the rest never got a clue.  My only Discover factions are the University and the Cyborgs.  If they're not in the game, it could get pretty stagnant on tech.

What am I doing lately with that?  Seems I do have D1 Information Networks as a pure Discover tech.  It's intended to be a hard barrier so that the Discover factions, particularly the University, can overcome it easily and get way ahead on research.  Meanwhile I've put Biology Lab in D1 Biogenetics, which is a mixed 3, 4, 0, 3 tech and very easy for most factions to research.  That means everyone can get some research improvement by building it, to get the +2 absolute improvement.  That matters quite a bit at the beginning of the game.

Putting fewer weights on things makes the tech harder to research.  Putting more weights on things make it easier to research.  You can construct entire flows through tech trees this way.  I have a fair number of pure Conquer techs for instance.  You're only likely to get them if you have a pure Conquer only focus!  Otherwise you will tend to discover the techs that have mixed benefits, and go up those parts of the tree.

From the player's point of view, the only way to communicate a sense of the weights besides trial and error, is to have a consistent metaphor for what each category means.  I'm pretty hard assed about Conquer techs.  It's where you're going to get your weapons and armor from, and you're not getting them any other way.  If it's a red tech, it's got a weapon or armor in it.  My Build is about getting minerals and energy benefits.  My Explore has evolved to be mostly about new chasses and mindworm stuff.  It's also about making people happy, i.e. population growth, but recently I conceded that bigger populations always produces more minerals and energy as well.  So lately I've been handling the happiness techs by saying they're primarily Explore with a weight of 4, but secondarily Build with a weight of 3 or 2, depending on what they give.

I generally try to keep research continuity between successive techs.  Going from "something needs Explore" to "something needs Conquer" can become a hard barrier in practice, a sort of cliff in the terrain of the tech tree.  Usually I don't want that, usually I want rolling hills that can be traversed.  However if I disapprove of some tech, and I want to soft hide / soft remove it from the game, I hide it behind 2 or 3 layers of changing research requirements.  The current exemplar of that is Genetic Warfare.  I did implement the prereqs sensibly, it's not willy nilly, but you're going to have to go through a convoluted Discover, Explore, Build, Conquer sequence to get it.  It's overpowered, and really easy to use if you get the Planetary Council to legalize atrocities.  Another way of thinking about it, is these transitional cliffs implement substantial delays.  I can make something that seems like it's earlier in the tech tree, in practice take way longer to get to.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

One thing you gotta watch out for, is that putting 0s in something creates a hard barrier to it being researched by that focus.

Clarification: by that focus solely when it is not selected as part of multi priories. In other words, If sum of technology values in all selected research priorities is zero, that technology will be last in line. It is still can be researched when all other choices are exhausted. I am sure you know this, just clarifying.

I agree with everything you said but it does only strengthen my point that it is obscure for player and almost impossible to project priority to result. Like one picking yellow would result in faction that is military weak, behind in research, behind in terraforming technologies, behind in native units, but quite ahead in mineral/economy production and having a lot of facilities in their bases. Nope. You cannot have them separated that cleanly in the game. For example, you cannot flourish in minerals without terraforming techniques and large number of economy multiplying facilities also affects your labs indirectly, etc.

In other words, these priorities should be redefined to make more sense as actual faction development direction and not just technology color group.

[bvanevery]

> It is still can be researched when all other choices are exhausted.

Which in a tech tree with research continuity such as I've implemented, will never happen.  There's always a "bread crumb" more tantalizing than the zero.

There are only 2 ways out of that pickle: 1) it's a Tier 1 tech, so you can pop a Supply Pod to gain it.  This may happen eventually.  You can get very far into the game with it never happening.  2) you trade or steal it from someone else.  In some random opponent games, none of the AIs ever learn it to begin with, so the "barrier tech" is never gained that way.

> but it does only strengthen my point that it is obscure for player and almost impossible to project priority to result.

That is false.  The player can read the README about how the mod was designed.  I've told players how things are categorized.  I've also taken great pains to try to make the lore of the game, fit with the actual tech given by the game.  There have been revisions of my mod where that got shaky, but recently, I feel I've won the battle of "intuitive relevance" as to what awards what.  This is a question of authorship, and I have not had enough feedback from players, to verify my own high opinions of my work / choices / results.  Nobody yet has said to me, "Brandon, seriously, WTF?"  :-)  Give it time, give it time.

Anyways, it's false that you can't explain things to the player.  You have to put a lot of effort into making it consistent though.  It is not easy to reshuffle the whole damn tech tree and have it all actually end up making sense.  You typically end up with a tech or two somewhere that doesn't quite fit the lore.  It's like working some kind of giant mosaic puzzle, trying to find the right piece of tile to put here or there.  Over time, I've become intimately familiar with the tiles available.  I have tried to fit the tiles in similar arrangements, multiple times, and have gone back and forth between styles of fittings.  That's what happens over 18 months of iteration on the problems.  I've never allowed lore issues to block a release; gameplay is king.  But on successive releases, as other concerned happened, I've usually found ways to improve the lore fits.

I've also got high falutin' ideas about how I'd never do the lore <--> tech linkage the way they did in this game.  It is too cumbersome to iterate on.  But that's a subject for another day, with a brand new game.

> Like one picking yellow would result in faction that is military weak,

That's not an abstractly provable assumption.  What is provable, is running my Morganites and my Pirates against my other AI factions, and seeing how they do against them.  Both are Pacifist pure Build factions nowadays.  One on land, one on sea.  How well the AI factions do, depends on how all the other AI factions go about things, the size of the map, etc.  I've been iterating on these issues for a long time.  There is no theory that will govern the results, you have to playtest.  I have my AI lab results, but I am awaiting the feedback of more playtesters as more people (hopefully) try out my mod over time.

> behind in research

Getting too far ahead in research can be a disadvantage, at least for the AI.  You have to actually produce all those units and facilities, and not just keep jacking up the cost of everything.

> Nope. You cannot have them separated that cleanly in the game.

You can / I did.  Until you put your own mod in front of enough people to give you feedback, you are merely theorizing about what can or can't be done.  I have put these separation concepts to the test.

The degree of separation has also changed over time.  For instance, the population and growth aspects of Explore vs. Build, are not nearly as cleanly separated as they used to be.  The rate at which factions also get through early parts of the tree, has also changed over time.  It is governed by how fat or thin the early tree is, like a funnel squirting water.  I've seen improvements or regressions in AI behavior simply by changes in that fatness or thinness.  I say again: you cannot theorize this stuff, because it is a complex system.  You have to playtest.  I'm still not sure if there are key early techs that end up changing stock AI behavior, once they are acquired.  I suspect there are, and I'm not sure how the pacing of these things in my mod has changed over time.  Only that in recent iterations, like say the past 10 releases, they've changed for the better.

> For example, you cannot flourish in minerals without terraforming techniques

That's not much of an example.  A Former is a Tier 1 tech.  You can certainly plant Forests and win things with those minerals.  "Forest and forget" is a known, viable approach to the game.  You can boost minerals with a big mine on a minerals special square, there is no restriction on such output.  My opinion is, you can win the game with Impact Squads if you're determined to do so.

> In other words, these priorities should be redefined to make more sense as actual faction development direction and not just technology color group.

I believe I did that, and I do not see how someone would propose to do differently than what I did.

[dino]

I think blind research is stupid feature for a player to use, there is too many absolutely essential techs and too many useless ones and bogging down on useless stuff early can even cut your development speed in half. What is the point of using blind research, if you feel the need to mod it in order to direct it to your liking anyway. The tech tree in this game is not designed to provide different balanced paths, supporting different playstyles and that would be necessary for a blind research to be fun to use by an advanced player.

Finetuning weights can improve AIs performance great deal though and for this reason it's worth playing with. For AIs you want to make it differentiate between factions less and only provide some slight flavour in a form different priorities and early short detours, while making sure that all factions will get essential techs not too far apart from each other.

[bvanevery]

there is too many absolutely essential techs and too many useless ones and bogging down on useless stuff early can even cut your development speed in half.

I don't agree with your vehemence about the problem.  I've played games of stock SMAC with blind research for almost 20 years, and I consider turning that off to be cheating.  The system can't be completely broken or I wouldn't have kept playing the game.

But it can be problem, i.e. a PITA.  In my mod I completely redesigned the tech tree, so that it's not a problem.  I also re-weighted the Explore, Discover, Build, Conquer weights according to what I consider to be a rational scheme.

What is the point of using blind research, if you feel the need to mod it in order to direct it to your liking anyway.

If by "mod" it you mean to change your research focus a lot while playing the game... well I never do that anymore.  Every game I play, is implicitly a test run for the default research focus of the faction I'm playing.  So for instance in my current massive chemical gassing During Action Report, I'm playing the Morganites as a pure Build faction.  This is how I feel out whether the AIs would have a hard or impossible time with their research sequences.  I've iterated through this enough times to be very confident that none of my modded factions are experiencing research barriers I don't want them to have.

Finetuning weights can improve AIs performance great deal though and for this reason it's worth playing with.

Yes I 100% agree.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

I think blind research is stupid feature for a player to use

Absolutely agree. This is a brilliant idea to simulate not directed research - sort of natural way the science progresses when you channel scientists efforts somewhere but cannot predict what exactly will be discovered.
However, as many other brilliant ideas in SMACX, it was poorly implemented. The blind research priorities engine depends on other features: 1) research values assigned to technologies, 2) actual technology dependency tree graph, and 3) the weird mechanism of quasi-random hiding about 1/3 of already available technologies. Even the slightest variation in these parameters above throw blind research off path pretty chaotically. As a result, selecting research priorities do not give you what you want. Yes, if you select say "yellow" research priority you next technology will be yellow in about 30-40% of the time. Which is somewhat above average 25% but not too much to notice it in game.

What it actually does good is to deny you unmatched technologies. In the example above selecting "yellow" research priority will postpone all non-yellow technologies (those with 0 in yellow value) as long as possible. However, exact technology value distribution is absolutely not visible to user and is not even reflected in datalink. One should browse alphax.txt research tree to understand each technology value combination and build a graph of dependencies to be able to trace research progress and tweak it correspondingly. Which is, of course, not user friendly.

, there is too many absolutely essential techs and too many useless ones and bogging down on useless stuff early can even cut your development speed in half. What is the point of using blind research, if you feel the need to mod it in order to direct it to your liking anyway. The tech tree in this game is not designed to provide different balanced paths, supporting different playstyles and that would be necessary for a blind research to be fun to use by an advanced player.

You are saying my words, man. See comments above about blind research mechanics. I agree that blind research does not support different play styles.
Due to that I didn't bother with fine tuning technology research values and proper tree dependencies in my mod. Instead I tried to distribute features across technologies more or less evenly so you don't have an absolute empty technologies (like Optical Computers) anymore. This at least soothes player frustration a little.

Finetuning weights can improve AIs performance great deal though and for this reason it's worth playing with. For AIs you want to make it differentiate between factions less and only provide some slight flavour in a form different priorities and early short detours, while making sure that all factions will get essential techs not too far apart from each other.

It sounds contradictory to what you and I said above about unpredictability of blind research. True, AI gets some technology set skew based on set priorities. However, the exact skew is 1) very unpredictable and unreliable, 2) very-very-very difficult to fine tune with research weights and tree dependencies, 3) dilutes very easily with technology trading. One probably can play thousand games and discover that certain priority set leads to certain technology set on average. However, slightest change in weights or tree build changes this and one would need to play another thousand games to understand how exactly.

In summary, it's not worth optimizing.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

I say even more. It does not seem like it was designed to support different play styles. It is more of a "spice" of the game.
Indeed, you wouldn't expect certain play style to give you Singularity engine early in the game while others won't have it until the end! Repeating same thing once again - the technology trading equalizes this anyway. Sooner or later AI would trade Singularity Mechanics and now others would have it. Technological advantage in this game is the advantage within currently actively researched layer of technologies. Anything before that is already known by everybody and anything beyond it is not known by anybody.

[bvanevery]

However, exact technology value distribution is absolutely not visible to user and is not even reflected in datalink. One should browse alphax.txt research tree to understand each technology value combination and build a graph of dependencies to be able to trace research progress and tweak it correspondingly. Which is, of course, not user friendly.

A coherent expectation can be built into the player as to what will happen, if the weights are chosen to have a predictable continuity, and the player plays many games to get the feel for it, and the player tends to choose static research strategies, so that the same research phenomena are repeated over and over again.  In short, if conditions are like when I test my mod.     YMMV if jumping to all kinds of different research categories because I don't do that.  And I will note: the difference between picking two research categories, and one category, is big.  It significantly reshapes your journey through the tree.

I have no idea if the stock game resembles the stable conditions of my mod.  It's been a long time since I've played the stock game in earnest.  So long, that I don't have a muscle memory for it anymore.

One thing I've noticed, is I highly suspect that cashing an Artifact for tech, typically gives you a tech outside of your usual research focus.  That could be deliberate, or it could be it simply doesn't use weights to decide what's learned, so you have pretty good odds of hitting something you're not looking for.

[bvanevery]

Instead I tried to distribute features across technologies more or less evenly

My personal aesthetics are, that's exactly the kind of design mistake in the original game that I've ruthlessly suppressed.  I don't believe in "doling out useful items" to everybody.  I regimented everything in terms of choice.  I had to do a lot of work to make it actually work in the real world.  It works AFAICT.  Haven't yet received playtester complaints to the contrary.

so you don't have an absolute empty technologies (like Optical Computers) anymore.

That's not a compelling reason to "dole out".  There's enough stuff in the tech tree to fill the holes, it's not basically impoverished.  For instance, Industrial Base doesn't have to give both Synthmetal Armor and Recycling Tanks, it can just give 1 benefit instead of 2.  Make that kind of decision enough times, and you have the surplus needed to fill up Optical Computers with something.

I figure the emptiness of Optical Computers is some accident of the original game's development history.  It's clearly not some ideal planned thing.  They probably had something in there, found it wasn't working somehow, and ran out of time to polish it up any better.  Could have been an errant tech, could have been a bit of dialogue that wasn't working, could have been a bug.

Considering how much time I've spent jousting at the tech tree, for 18 months, I can totally see why the original developers cut their losses and ran away from such problems, declaring a law of diminishing returns.  It's not like anyone's paid me to perfect this.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

One thing I've noticed, is I highly suspect that cashing an Artifact for tech, typically gives you a tech outside of your usual research focus.  That could be deliberate, or it could be it simply doesn't use weights to decide what's learned, so you have pretty good odds of hitting something you're not looking for.

For both artifact and pod discovered technology you get the cheapest one combined value one.

[bvanevery]

2) very-very-very difficult to fine tune with research weights and tree dependencies,

False.  It's actually rather straightforward.  I've fully implemented an example of how to do it in my tree.  The rules I've followed are:

• the primary research category of a tech gets a 4
• secondary categories usually get a 3, unless in a special case I make it smaller.
• if it's exceptionally valuable to the research focus, i.e. it bestows the Planetary Energy Grid, it gets a 5.  I'm sparing on 5s though.  Can't get into the habit of saying everything is oh so valuable.
• zeros are for obstructing progress in that direction.  I do place hard barriers where I want them.

Now, you're welcome to try my mod, declare it capricious , and tell me exactly how it's capricious in your play-through.  But I claim my mod is an example of something that works and isn't that difficult to implement.  If you think otherwise, you should at least calibrate and formalize your expectations vs. the observable reality.  Maybe you want lots more control than I do, and think things are irritating where I don't?

3) dilutes very easily with technology trading.

You stop technology trading by putting Secret Projects in the way.

In summary, it's not worth optimizing.

That's a personal value judgment, not an absolute.  I thought it was worth optimizing and I did so.  It was piles of work.  That's one of the reasons my mod is under an Attribution license.  I did all this work, and if anyone wants to benefit from it, they can jolly well acknowledge that I did all that work, not them.  Not that they can't do their own pile of work on top of it, but, building on the shoulders of giants and all of that.  I poured blood on the table to make it actually work.  Many many design iterations, which is all that a game designer can do in the face of such problems, IMO.

It clearly wasn't worth it to the original game developers, to push it any farther than they did.  They had to ship the product and make money.  That said, we don't know how much they pushed it just to get to the point they got to.

Wrestling with this problem is definitely not low hanging fruit.

[bvanevery]

For both artifact and pod discovered technology you get the cheapest one combined value one.

Pods only yield Tier 1 techs.  I think it's impossible to substantiate any statistical spread in that case.  You pick up techs too fast to have any idea.  Only way you could prove it, is by correctly disassembling the game's code.  Have you done so?

For an Artifact, your claim is possible.  Cheapest weighted techs, i.e. only 1 category weighted "4" in my mod, are actually not easy to discover.  Those are what I use for "hard research barriers".  The easiest techs to discover have the most weights in the most categories.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

2) very-very-very difficult to fine tune with research weights and tree dependencies,

False.  It's actually rather straightforward.  I've fully implemented an example of how to do it in my tree.  The rules I've followed are:

You are doing it for too long, man. I didn't say it is impossible. The fact that you did it doesn't make it easier for general public.


And yes, I express personal opinion here and don't pretend it is absolute. This is just my observation. There are thousands mods out there and only you are focused on encoding certain evolution path into the tech tree. Nobody else bothers. This is a prize to you as a dedicated researcher. I don't want to go this path, though.

[bvanevery]

It does not seem like it was designed to support different play styles.

You are conflating different play styles with different combat styles.  They are not the same.  Nobody said you have to play this game by focusing on combat.  If you choose to be a Spartanesque war machine, yes your options are going to be narrowly channeled.  Bigger weapons are better, thicker armor is better.  You do have some combined arms variance.  You do have some different naval, air, hovertank, and mindworm invasion options.  The variety of what you can do to prevail in combat is limited, but it's not zero.

I think it is difficult to establish what is a valid or invalid play style, when the AI is not competent enough to pursue many of them.