Engineering is way too important

[Roubik]

Let's get something clear, first I am talking about early-mid game and it's not that Physics and Society techs are useless but... Of all the tech trees I have noticed that the most important one by far is the orange/engineering one.
Why?
1) It includes new spaceships and +10 fleet leadership each time
2) It has bonus to mineral production which is the most important normal resource
3) Probably the reason I decided to open this thread is the weapons... It has anti-shield weapons AND anti-armor missiles, and let's not fool ourselves, you all love missiles.

I am not going to list everything else like rare resources production/extraction and armor since I don't consider that part of the problem I am trying to show.
So... there is always this problem in early-mid game, you can waste some physics and some society but you simply can't have enough of engineering research!

Maybe, just maybe we need some anti-shield on physics and/or some weapon tech in the green/society tree so that we can have a better balance.

 

[Chaos_TLW]

Green has multiple pop growth technologies and fleet command bonuses which are quite a bit more substantial than the +10. Physics also has some pretty good general use weaponry in both anti-shield and anti-armor categories with the plasma cannons and disruptors. I don't really think it is *that* unbalanced, quite honestly.

 

[tobias.mb]

I agree. It's still generally fine compared to society research - society has some critical research like gene-modding, habitability, fleet cap, better capitals,.... It's just that you will usually do well on society research since you get more of it (from monuments mainly)
But there are far too few physics research compared to engineering. It also shows in repeatable techs.

 

[Roubik]

Green has multiple pop growth technologies and fleet command bonuses which are quite a bit more substantial than the +10. Physics also has some pretty good general use weaponry in both anti-shield and anti-armor categories with the plasma cannons and disruptors. I don't really think it is *that* unbalanced, quite honestly.

Like I said above, I don't consider the other tech worthless. BUT until mid-late game we are starving for more engineering tech. Not once I had issues with society or physics, but if I want a strong fleet, engineering keeps me back. It has the best early game weapons, it has the spaceships and it has the armor which are all vital.

 

[B3ndolf]

i think the 3 trees are mostly well balanced, possibly physics could do with something extra but mostly balanced, the problem i find is that engineering tech is the hardest to come by and is always lagging behind my other 2. there are just more sources of green and blue research available. green gets all the monument research and from some other buildings, blue gets the dimensional portal event that seems to fire every single game and black hole research modules.

 

[Riftwalker]

society is also fairly strong to rush, what with it having cloning in it...

 

[Earth Dragon]

You'll always have issues with which can do what for you. I noticed they cropped out a couple Mat techs over to Physics so they are obviously aware of the issue. There is only so much arbitrary tinkering you can do however and set Blue-Energy/Research(Space), Green-Food/Growth, Orange-Minerals/Mining(Space) is just going to land on some of those categories being more important then others.

I disagree that your better weapons options, or even needing ships extremely early, come from Engineering. The length you can run with PDS,Las,Las Corvettes is pretty far, at least as far as Single Player, When cranking those up to UV, and you can't even use better weaponry if you don't have heftier power supplies. Colonizing Faster is still useful, and Advanced Ships are only so much better unless they have the proper Combat Roles to layer your fleet properly

The real problem is that there are no dedicated Engineering jobs on the ground level like there are Society, and if you get the right event, a truck load of Physics research. I also seem to run into planets with Physics and Society boosts far more often then those with Engineering Boosts.

Having tough choices in a single tree is always going to be the way of it however. You are also displaying a bigger want to go to war. That's not the case for every empire. Some can get by on only playing nice and only having to focus on the Industry and Mat part of the tree. I also think Energy Generation is massively under appreciated, but then, I rarely have trade set to 1 for 1 like many of the "but it's going to waste for unity" players. Trade is also a means to circumvent Consumer Goods needs. There's a lot of adjusting that needs to be done, but I don't think it's quite so bleak as a few have made it (more elsewhere then here).

Valid observation, but this is always going to be teetering and divergent tastes will see it differently (preferring Shields/Lasers/Fleets Size over Cannons/Armor/Larger Ships)

 

[Badesumofu]

It never used to bother me that Engi was the most important, because I could just upgrade all my science labs to Engi labs. Now I can't, and it seems no matter what I do, I produce more physics and soc than Engi.

 

[the glory of plain]

for synth there will never be enough engineering

 

[Baro]

I honestly don't understand why they haven't just moved to a generic 'science points' rather than the 3 speciifc types now that there's no way to specialize.

 

[Earth Dragon]

I honestly don't understand why they haven't just moved to a generic 'science points' rather than the 3 speciifc types now that there's no way to specialize.

And I hope they go back to specializing personally. From Roleplay to customization to a reasonable level of complexity, 3 trees with extra manipulation of which one you are specializing in is better then generic. But I understand the thought of generalizing if they aren't going to give you better tools then playing "dwarves" as your starting race

 

[Sinister2202]

I honestly don't understand why they haven't just moved to a generic 'science points' rather than the 3 speciifc types now that there's no way to specialize.

Yeah the 3 types seem redundant now. But I guess it's there for the sake of representation of what goes where, as there are still orbital research stations that make tiniest bit of differences.

 

[buglepong]

Because paradox cant design a tech tree to save their lives

 

[01d55]

The problem I have is not that engineering has better techs, but that it has more techs. I exhaust non-repeating technologies in physics, then society, and much later engineering. I've had games where I exhausted physics before I researched tier 2 guns, because there were other things in engineering that I wanted.

I find myself putting off completing the synth ascension project because I don't want to stall my engineering research. For bio ascension I don't hesitate to modify my larger populations immediately.

 

[nuyu]

We should have old lab back, that gives us which type to focus on.

 

[Mikhail_Mengsk]

Because paradox cant design a tech tree to save their lives

Tech trees makes the game predictable, however, and it can devolve in "X rush" where there is a clearly better path that becomes the "new meta". I like them, but they have an obvious downside.

 

[buglepong]

Tech trees makes the game predictable, however, and it can devolve in "X rush" where there is a clearly better path that becomes the "new meta". I like them, but they have an obvious downside.

Oh you mean like what Stellaris has now, but better?

We should have old lab back, that gives us which type to focus on.

Cant do it now with building slots as hard to come by as they are. It could be solved, but for some reason, one of the design philosophies of Stellaris is "NO SLIDERS"!!!

 

[The Boz]

What I have noticed is that the engi tree has more stuff/more overall research cost, and fewer sources. In my games, engineering is constantly at least 10 to 20% behind the other two research generation values, and I am well into blue and green repeatables by the time high-quality missile, torpedo, or armor techs start appearing.
PDX plz fix

 

[pryr]

Engineering has most of techs and on top of that, it's hardest research to get. A lot of physics research comes from space stations (space research disbalance is another but related topic that i was trying to raise once), a lot of biology comes from culture workers, and engineering is just outpaced by other science areas.

Previously at least it was possible to counter science disbalance by building engineering labs mostly.

 

[Verx90]

this is not true, its an illusion ; because the majority of engeneering research are "game changing" at a gameplay lvl , for example ships class , starbases class , robots .

but they are not more important, there are important research that change the game in the other 2 camp too, but they are less "present" in the gameplay since they are generaly buff or "1 time action" .

Oh you mean like what Stellaris has now, but better?

thats the point of the current science system , not to be efficent for meta playing . they didn't want to negate a "meta rush" they wanted to make it less " ripetitive" making you unluck different research evrygame ( or offering you 2 meta research at the same time , forcing you to chose what was better in the current game) .