Empire Specific Technologies

[AbenoSenbei]

So one of the problems people are experiencing with the current version of Stellaris is that there's not much to really set all the different races apart. Sure, they have randomized ethos and traits, but they don't really feel different, and it doesn't take long for them to all blend together into, at most, "angry aliens" and "nice aliens".

One addition that would help reduce this somewhat is unique technologies available to each empire, including your own. Basically, you'd have a large pool of technologies that can't normally be learned in game, but every empire randomly gets a few added to their technology deck at the start of the game as common technologies, possibly influenced a little by ethos/government/traits. There's a similar system in place already for Spiritualists and psionic techs, but this would be on a much larger scale. None of these would be "useful but boring" techs like +X% minerals, but special buildings, new ship types, etc., technologies that can play a significant role in an empire's development.

What are the benefits? Aside from the added replayability for your own empires, it would encourage more interaction with your fellow aliens. These new techs could be heavily weighted to appear in debris scans, providing incentive to warlike players. For more peaceful empires, research agreements could add your partner's unique technologies to your own tech deck for the duration, making it in your best interest to explore the galaxy and befriend as many aliens as possible. And just imagine how fun it would be to field a Federation fleet combining an array of unique technologies from all its members...

Right now, after you've finished meeting your nearby neighbors and establishing your borders, making first contact with other races is a pretty dull affair. "Oh, a new alien, whatever" you think, click on one of the prompts to make the popup go away, and get back to waiting for research to finish or buildings to be constructed. With this system, first contact becomes more like what it's meant to be: an exciting encounter with an race whose abilities are a complete mystery, an opportunity for your empire to discover something amazing that it's never seen before.

A few quick examples of the kinds of technologies that might be empire specific, mostly borrowed from sci fi shows, to help give an idea what I'm talking about:

• A new class of Star Trek style science ships, that have enough hull points and weapons to fight off pirates and "space monsters" on their own.
• A new class of construction ships that can repair/upgrade other ships.
• Modular ships that can split up their individual sections into corvettes and recombine later.
• A cloaking module that hides the ship from other players until it attacks something, letting them sneak through enemy territory (balanced by having an expensive power cost, resulting in an inferior ship when it actually has to fight)
• The opposite of a cloak: holographic projectors that make a ship appear look like multiple to other players, allowing for bluffing opportunities where you trick players into going after dummy fleets.
• Battleship exclusive modules that turn the ship into a mobile wormhole station for itself and its surrounding fleet.
• FTL scrambler defenses, that break an incoming enemy fleet up and scatters some of it across adjacent systems.
• System defenses that generates shields over any friendly fleets in the system, soaking up large amounts of damage for them.
• Radio interference modules that prevent enemy admirals from communicating with his fleet in combat, i.e. deny the other fleet its leader bonuses
• Weapons that "infect" enemy ships, causing constant damage over time until the ship returns to a spaceport.
• Weapons that "paralyze" ships, temporarily disabling their weapons and/or modules.
• Weapons that deal no damage or debuffs at all, but instead hack into the enemy ships and start transmitting back data on the enemy's technologies.
• Boarding parties that can be sent to other ships to attack them from the inside, with effects ranging from minor sabotage to outright taking over the ship.

Obviously, there'd be plenty of balancing work to be done, and the AI would need to know how to use its technologies more effectively (I expect that's a big part of why current ship combat is very bare bones), but I think it's easy to see that it's definitely possible to shake things up. Each of these technologies on its own isn't a big game changer, but combine several and you end up with a race that has its own distinct flavor.

 

[Ventessel]

Some of these are quite interesting, but I think you correctly identified the major issue: AI implementation.

 

[redlion]

I very much agree that the species and empires need differentiation. The ethos/government/traits were all meant to differentiate species from each other, but in the end they only serve to categorize and limit the growth of the... for lack of a better term, character of the species.

Take two species with identical traits besides taxonomical class (mammal, reptile etc) and they'll play exactly the same. But they shouldn't. An avian brain should respond to space flight differently than a reptile brain, and so on. The traits make them all comparable in a way that's leveling for multiplayer, but not very unique in terms of the development of your empire. Techs come at roughly the same intervals for empires of the same size.

I'd like to see 'decks' that are unique to traits or ethos or governments, but I'd also like species, planet type preference and perhaps other factors to also have decks of technologies.

 

[Ventessel]

Ethos choices already influence your tech draw to a certain degree, I think that giving them a more decisive impact would be fun.

Maybe have a setting, similar to arcade mode in HoI3, where you can choose whether to play with "Ethos Exclusive" tech draws or not.

 

[X3KJ]

Some of your proposed techs are super powerfull, others not really (splittable ships... whats the use of that???). So one empire can get shafted in regards to usefull tech, randomly. I don't agree with this. I'm ok with tying some technologies to certain traits. For example the +science traits could have some tech related to it, as well as the mineral and credit traits. Charisma could also be something (even better diplo relation), Repugnant could be weaponized (more army damage or something like that).

 

[Qin-shi]

I think that you need something like that also for species.
If i am a lion-like alien I shall have something different from a spacecrab, not only the portrait.
And i think that mammals, reptiles and so on, should have specific traits.

 

[JesterHell]

So one of the problems people are experiencing with the current version of Stellaris is that there's not much to really set all the different races apart. Sure, they have randomized ethos and traits, but they don't really feel different, and it doesn't take long for them to all blend together into, at most, "angry aliens" and "nice aliens".

One addition that would help reduce this somewhat is unique technologies available to each empire, including your own. Basically, you'd have a large pool of technologies that can't normally be learned in game, but every empire randomly gets a few added to their technology deck at the start of the game as common technologies, possibly influenced a little by ethos/government/traits. There's a similar system in place already for Spiritualists and psionic techs, but this would be on a much larger scale. None of these would be "useful but boring" techs like +X% minerals, but special buildings, new ship types, etc., technologies that can play a significant role in an empire's development.

I don't think that introducing arbitrary limitations on technology is the answer and that what this is, while it might make thematic sense it does not make logical sense, given enough time and research everyone should end up with the same technology's, I mean what logical reason is there for it being impossible for anyone other then those who drew that special card at game start for not being able to research it?

What are the benefits? Aside from the added replayability for your own empires, it would encourage more interaction with your fellow aliens. These new techs could be heavily weighted to appear in debris scans, providing incentive to warlike players. For more peaceful empires, research agreements could add your partner's unique technologies to your own tech deck for the duration, making it in your best interest to explore the galaxy and befriend as many aliens as possible. And just imagine how fun it would be to field a Federation fleet combining an array of unique technologies from all its members...

I fine with there being more weighted techs like psionics is with spiritualist/materialist but I'm against anything that make it so only certain empire can research certain technology's, I think that stellaris's weighted tech system if far better then the racial tech that most 4x game do.

Right now, after you've finished meeting your nearby neighbors and establishing your borders, making first contact with other races is a pretty dull affair. "Oh, a new alien, whatever" you think, click on one of the prompts to make the popup go away, and get back to waiting for research to finish or buildings to be constructed. With this system, first contact becomes more like what it's meant to be: an exciting encounter with an race whose abilities are a complete mystery, an opportunity for your empire to discover something amazing that it's never seen before.

This make me think your more interested in it being thematic then logical, different empires should develop differently but that's what the tech card/weight system is there for and I personally don't think that locked techs are a good answer.

• A new class of Star Trek style science ships, that have enough hull points and weapons to fight off pirates and "space monsters" on their own.
• A new class of construction ships that can repair/upgrade other ships.
• Modular ships that can split up their individual sections into corvettes and recombine later.
• A cloaking module that hides the ship from other players until it attacks something, letting them sneak through enemy territory (balanced by having an expensive power cost, resulting in an inferior ship when it actually has to fight)
• The opposite of a cloak: holographic projectors that make a ship appear look like multiple to other players, allowing for bluffing opportunities where you trick players into going after dummy fleets.
• Battleship exclusive modules that turn the ship into a mobile wormhole station for itself and its surrounding fleet.
• FTL scrambler defenses, that break an incoming enemy fleet up and scatters some of it across adjacent systems.
• System defenses that generates shields over any friendly fleets in the system, soaking up large amounts of damage for them.
• Radio interference modules that prevent enemy admirals from communicating with his fleet in combat, i.e. deny the other fleet its leader bonuses
• Weapons that "infect" enemy ships, causing constant damage over time until the ship returns to a spaceport.
• Weapons that "paralyze" ships, temporarily disabling their weapons and/or modules.
• Weapons that deal no damage or debuffs at all, but instead hack into the enemy ships and start transmitting back data on the enemy's technologies.
• Boarding parties that can be sent to other ships to attack them from the inside, with effects ranging from minor sabotage to outright taking over the ship.

I think that a lot of these tech's should just be added to the base tech cards not dished out at the beginning of the game and if you don't get it then your never getting it, I think that as more technology get added with DLC that this issue will go away its just that there need to be more options and every option should have ethos weights.

TL;DR
I personally don't think it makes sense logically and I've never liked empire locked techs in other 4X games.