Am I the only one who thinks the tech rebalancing went a bit too far?

[HFY]

So both before and after, players could get the tech speed they wanted.

Not in my case.

The tech self-accelerating snowball felt too strong -- if the pace was good for the first part, then it was too fast later, and if it would have been satisfactory later then I never got there because the early part was much too slow.

What the tech rework did is flatten this curve.

I'm not certain that every part of the tech rework was necessary, but IMHO it's in a better place now overall.

 

[117Killer]

I mean i’m not too familiar with the tech rebalance. I neither read the dev diary for it, nor played it enough since then.

But if getting to the end of the tech tree too quick was the issue, why would they not just extend out the tech tree? Half the top mods on steams add extra techs either in the middle or to the end of the tech tree.

You wouldn’t even have to worry about numbers getting too crazy, cause you can still have the stats of current tier 5 be at the end, just add more increments in to achieve that.

That way your adding to the current content, not slowing down player progression.

 

[Progamere22e]

Yeah for the average player the tech rebalance was a nightmare. Being stuck at corvette only fleets by year 2300 during the breakthrough tech testing period was a literal snooze fest. Honestly I'm surprised at the number of people that want tech progression to drag out, i much prefer getting to the good stuff by midgame before it starts lagging horribly by the end game year.

I would get it if each tech had its own sort of identity like civilization for example where your moving to completely different time periods and each new tech is dramatically different and game changing, but this isn't the case for stellaris, most techs are just upgrades of starter techs and gameplay remains grossly unaffected. with the outliers being the bigger ships, cruisers and battleships, and weapons like the X-mount weapons which do actually have an impact. most of the other techs are mainly just stat increases to existing stuff. So again why exactly are we looking to drag out tech progression? its not like there's anything particularly unique to experience about the lower tier techs.

If its that the player is constantly outpacing the AI then i understand why we would want to slow it down, but otherwise, in my opinion there is no point in slowing down tech progression.

I should add too that the "mid game" and "end game" designations of stellaris don't actually separate any meaningful developmental periods, they're just the dates that allow a crisis to spawn. like i said before the way the game plays throughout the years in between those dates is exactly the same, there is no noticeable difference, were not moving through different phases of development, society is not changing in any noticeable way besides more planets being settled and more pops growing, the game plays exactly the same before those dates as it does after.

 

[Abdulijubjub]

But if getting to the end of the tech tree too quick was the issue, why would they not just extend out the tech tree? Half the top mods on steams add extra techs either in the middle or to the end of the tech tree.

You wouldn’t even have to worry about numbers getting too crazy, cause you can still have the stats of current tier 5 be at the end, just add more increments in to achieve that.

Adding 10 or 12 new techs to each of the 3 branches, complete with localization, icons, and ideas for actual content is a lot of work.

And then you have to test it in beta. And if players don't like it, you throw it all away.

And if you don't need to have new ideas for useful-but-not-overpowered-new-content... if all the new techs are just e.g. the existing techs split in half (two 10% minerals from miners techs instead of one 20% minerals from miner tech)... all you've done is made those techs twice as expensive and made the player click more. Just double the cost of the tech instead of going to a ton of effort to add filler.

And if you're going to just double the cost of the tech... why not just cut the output of researchers in half? It does the same thing, but it's much easier to see.

 

[currylambchop]

And if you're going to just double the cost of the tech... why not just cut the output of researchers in half? It does the same thing, but it's much easier to see.

alternative methods of generating research besides researchers would be disproportionately buffed if researcher output is reduced

 

[HFY]

alternative methods of generating research besides researchers would be disproportionately buffed if researcher output is reduced

This is a solid point because they added a bunch of those ways (via Leaders) very recently.

 

[Sian]

Yeah for the average player the tech rebalance was a nightmare. Being stuck at corvette only fleets by year 2300 during the breakthrough tech testing period was a literal snooze fest.

Exaggeration doesn’t do your argument much good, even while playing fairly inefficient (by my own standards), while still remembering to push any research at all, at the latest i get destroyers in early 2240s, cruisers by 2260-2270s and Battleships just before 2300.

If you get still run Covette fleets because you don’t have better available, it’s not the fault of the tech rebalance, but your extreme allergy against building research-based planets.

All your resource output should, directly or indirectly end up being funneled towards improving your research or alloy throughput

 

[Nevars]

BUT I still don't and never will understand the increase in consumer goods anytime you have an increase in research speed.

Is it? Increasing output by pumping more input seem more sensible and logical than magically increase output alone.

 

[LiZinckle]

Here is the question. A researcher easily produces 24, 36 to late game of total research points per month(RPPM), in the mean time 10 systems produces maybe 15 RPPM, with all techs considered. The disparity has been a hot topic since 2.0 update.

Sure, you can either choose to buff the system production, then further increase the tech costs. They are the same thing.

Or if, like some players who wants faster game... Well, we have sliders and a handful of mods, and with each update, the moddable parts grow.

I still recommend try on the new default setting. I would not say it is the best especially for some players who are mostly vocal in some other communities, but it has merits.

 

[Abdulijubjub]

alternative methods of generating research besides researchers would be disproportionately buffed if researcher output is reduced

I consider this a good thing, though. Alternative methods like research stations are currently weak to the point of irrelevance, even after the change.

 

[Progamere22e]

Exaggeration doesn’t do your argument much good, even while playing fairly inefficient (by my own standards), while still remembering to push any research at all, at the latest i get destroyers in early 2240s, cruisers by 2260-2270s and Battleships just before 2300.

If you get still run Covette fleets because you don’t have better available, it’s not the fault of the tech rebalance, but your extreme allergy against building research-based planets.

All your resource output should, directly or indirectly end up being funneled towards improving your research or alloy throughput

it was an exaggeration for sure but if you already knew that, why respond with this condescending lecture about how good at the game you are. OF COURSE it was an exaggeration i thought that was pretty obvious, the point however still remains that the scaling for us non pro gamers (unlike you of course) wasn't that fun.

 

[currylambchop]

I consider this a good thing, though. Alternative methods like research stations are currently weak to the point of irrelevance, even after the change.

Did not say if it is good or bad, just that it isn’t identical to increasing the tech cost.

 

[dulahan]

I'm kind of the opposite end. I wish it had gone even farther. I like slow games (Typical setting is x4 research in the largest galaxy but with a very low number of habitable worlds). But it's been hard to find a good balance point for the crisis dates.

 

[Sian]

it was an exaggeration for sure but if you already knew that, why respond with this condescending lecture about how good at the game you are. OF COURSE it was an exaggeration i thought that was pretty obvious, the point however still remains that the scaling for us non pro gamers (unlike you of course) wasn't that fun.

I'm Playing at Commodore ... I'm no where near as good as many people (probably because i don't feel like micro-managing for those last couple % from playing OP-flavor-of-the-patch, (ab)using tailor-made ship-builds or vassals etc) ... but still I'm strong at the more generalist marco-strategic layers, and i have a strong understanding of what you can do, even if I can't be arsed to do so myself, since i don't find that the execution is an interesting game

But exaggerating to this extent results in people believing that your worse than you actually are (or that you're throwing toys out of the pram because you can't be OP within your favoured settings), and as such don't have a solid understanding of how the balancing is on a more general, wider level

 

[KNakamura]

Exaggeration doesn’t do your argument much good, even while playing fairly inefficient (by my own standards), while still remembering to push any research at all, at the latest i get destroyers in early 2240s, cruisers by 2260-2270s and Battleships just before 2300.

If you get still run Covette fleets because you don’t have better available, it’s not the fault of the tech rebalance, but your extreme allergy against building research-based planets.

All your resource output should, directly or indirectly end up being funneled towards improving your research or alloy throughput

General reminder: unity focused builds that move to ascension are pretty powerful too.

 

[Progamere22e]

General reminder: unity focused builds that move to ascension are pretty powerful too.

arguably more powerful even, since ascension tiers reduce empire size.

 

[Abdulijubjub]

Maximize FP: Focus on making alloys, to build more ships.
Maximize FP': Focus on maxing tech, to increase the power of your ships and the size of your economy as you accumulate techs.
Maximize FP'': Focus on unity, to accumulate ascensions which decrease empire size, in order to increase the rate at which you can accumulate techs.

But it all rolls up into Fleet Power eventually. And while alloys and tech both increase fleet power (better weapons, repeatables, or just more ships), unity is really only useful for growing the economy and decreasing empire size, and cannot increase fleet power directly.

"Everything, directly or indirectly, ultimately should be funneled toward tech and alloys" isn't wrong. Only better research levels and more ships increase fleet power, with the exception of a few early boosts in Supremacy (but you can nearly always pick those up without focusing unity). You can have all the economy and tiny empire size you want from unity, but unless you use it to produce alloys or research tech, it will not change your fleet power.

 

[Troyen]

But if getting to the end of the tech tree too quick was the issue, why would they not just extend out the tech tree? Half the top mods on steams add extra techs either in the middle or to the end of the tech tree.

Pre-rebalance, at the start of the game, the average tech took you a few years to research. By the end of the game, the average tech could be researched in less than a year. If you adjusted the tech cost slider, it would increase both early and late game costs together. Adding more techs to the game here (which btw they have been doing in DLC, see First Contact's impact on Society as an example) just gives you more techs to blow through in seven months, assuming you can even find that many new interesting techs to not simply skip over on the path to repeatables.

Adding increased costs to the formula allows the early game to remain relatively unchanged, but late-game techs on average take more than a year to research, sometimes a couple years. You also have to be a little more selective about what techs to pick in the mid-game so that you can keep up with the power curve.

 

[Dragatus]

This is a blanket adjustment, almost akin to moving the tech speed slider in the game settings, I don't have any strong opinions about this. I suppose that in the early game, coupled with the removal of those +20% Researcher techs, it increases the relative importance of space-based science, so it's a relative nerf to tech rush builds and a relative buff to outpost spam builds; but it doesn't seem to be that big a deal.

An important thing the reduction in Researcher output did is increase the relative value of Unity jobs vs Researchers, which in turn made Unity builds more viable, whether you're doing an initial Unity burst to rush your ascension path or a long term planetary ascension build.

 

[Peter Ebbesen]

Returning to the main topic, I do wish the tech rebalance had made any attempt to rein in war snowballing.

Killing your neighbours has always been the best strategy, but in older versions it was much easier to stay competitive by teching quickly and efficiently. Now it feels like no matter how I build my empire, my success is exclusively determined by how many AI empires I've gobbled up, which is more dependent on random empire generation than any choices I made.
If I don't want to gobble up my neighbours, I have to substantially lower the difficulty so I can compete with AI empires that do.

Related, I also don't like how tech scaling is tied to difficulty. You can disable it in galaxy settings, but that completely removes the changes to tech cost scaling by tier, so you end up in the same situation as 3.10 where the first couple tiers are really slow, then you blitz through tiers 3-5.
If I want to play on different difficulties, I need to fiddle with the Difficulty Adjusted Technology Cost setting to try keep my tech costs the same. It also doesn't work well with scaling difficulty, applying the full tech cost increase despite scaling difficulties being closer to Ensign than the difficulty they scale to.

Or you need to play with galaxy settings that laves enough territory to be gobbled up through rapid peaceful expansion fueled by first contact influence play diplomatically, I guess. That isn't about how many you gobble up - it is about how many you convince to join your cause.