For the love of God, when are we ever gonna get an in game tech tree library?

[PirateJack]

I'm not sure an actual tree structure would be the best solution for this because there are so many interconnecting parts that would make for a very confusing graphic, but I wouldn't mind being able to see the current deck of techs you're drawing from and the weights for each (represented as a list of prerequisites with a tick or cross to show if you have it and the weight modifier across from it), and the total deck with the weights/hard prereqs listed so you can see what you need to research to find it. Stick a search bar on top so you can find things easier and call it job done.

I don't think it'll happen, though. The wiki is officially endorsed and serves the same purpose as we're discussing here, or it will do once it's updated. There's little difference between opening the Steam overlay and searching the wiki and having an in-game one you can use. If this ever happens I reckon it'd be towards the end of Stellaris' life cycle.

 

[Oracel]

How about: You're the head of state and you ask your researchers to come up with designs for a battleship and they say "Sorry, we don't know how to build a ship any bigger than our cruisers, and we don't currently have any ideas for how to solve the various structural issues that keep us from making anything bigger. But we do have a proposal from a guy who has an idea for how to make a more efficient food processing plant, and a proposal for a new mineral extraction process, and a proposal for a better plasma gun. Those are the only ideas our scientists have at this time. Which one would you like us to work on? Maybe we'll have a better idea on how to make bigger ships later on, but no matter how much we try right now, bigger ships keep folding up like oragami when we turn on the engines. We can't do much until someone comes up with a new idea." That's how the current system works, and it makes a certain amount of sense. Kinda. It's not perfect, but any system that only allows you to research one tech at a time is going to be unrealistic. At least we get to research techs from 3 different fields (physics, society and engineering) at a time.

Well, honestly, I don't think that is how research works in general. You don't have random ideas, except for some genius special cases. Rather, scientists research a distinct project with a certain scope. And you can always make a ship bigger, the question is only how long it may take to overcome the obstacles. But it is not that you can't think of a bigger ship. Moreover you most probably won't have the same guys researching bigger ships as you have for your food processing plant.

So what about an entirely new system:

• you have a certain amount of Research Teams (might be 3, might be more, might be expandable)

• each team is given a certain task (this might be something specific like a cruiser or something less specific like just "ship improvements")

• scientists will give you a prediction on how hard it will probably be to achieve progress on that matter and what resources and funding they will probably need (here is plenty of room for some randomization)

• you decide whether it is worth to start that project now or whether it should be postponed

• you decide how much you want to spend on the project, which will impact the research speed

• events may occur, which report unexpected difficulties delaying the project, making it more expensive or maybe you get a lucky breakthrough that shortens research time

• the result may not be bound to a specific outcome, the less specific the task, the more random but also more frequent the results will probably be

• you may scrap the project at any time, if progress becomes too slow, you lose interest or costs rise, making it unfeasible to proceed - your progress will be stored though

This does not mean that there has to be a tech tree, where every possible future tech is visible right from the start. Many mid- to late-game techs might be hidden under question marks at the beginning of the game and may only be discovered under certain circumstances.

I think that with such a system, we could keep a bit of uncertainty while at the same time giving the player the choice where he or she wants the focus to be laid on.

 

[khearn]

Well, honestly, I don't think that is how research works in general. You don't have random ideas, except for some genius special cases. Rather, scientists research a distinct project with a certain scope. And you can always make a ship bigger, the question is only how long it may take to overcome the obstacles. But it is not that you can't think of a bigger ship. Moreover you most probably won't have the same guys researching bigger ships as you have for your food processing plant.

You do reach limits. You can't always make a ship bigger. Eventually, they start breaking because you don't know how to make them strong or rigid enough. Or you do know, but it makes them so heavy they are pretty much immobile.

We've known about the idea of space elevators for decades. Just a cable (or probably a ribbon) from the ground up to geosync orbit, that a vehicle can go up and down much cheaper than a rocket . But there's this little detail of the tensile strength that it takes just to keep it from snapping due to its own weight. Steel isn't even close to string enough. Nor is carbon fiber or stuff like kevlar or spectra. So the idea has sat on the shelf for a long time, just a box a ways down the tech tree. Last I checked (a few years ago), carbon nanotubes were thought to maybe be strong enough, but they weren't sure exactly how strong they are. If it turns out they are, (or we come up with some other material that's stronger), we can start that research project.

Yeah. I agree that naval engineers can't be easily reassigned to do food tech. but this is a Grand Strategy game, not a Research Simulation. You've got to make simplifications.

I think that with such a system, we could keep a bit of uncertainty while at the same time giving the player the choice where he or she wants the focus to be laid on.

It'd keep a bit of uncertainty for the first few playthroughs, but then the player would know the tech progression and the question marks would just be cosmetic. Meh.

 

[khearn]

Gues the wiki has to be updated, but thats not realy a counter argument for what i said

It's precisely a counter argument. If the wiki is going to be an official replacement for adequate information in the game, then Paradox needs to update it when they put out a new release. It's been over a week since 2.2 came out, and the "official" source of info doesn't have a lot of the info the players need.

One doesn't know if the wiki is up to date, or simply wrong. An in-game way to get info that would pull the info directly from the game's local data files will always be up to date and accurate. And if someone, for instance, changes things with a mod, the game will know about the changes and be able to show it correctly. Because the code that displays the tech info would be getting that info from the same place as the code that implements the tech in the game. Can't do that with the wiki.

 

[krios41]

It's precisely a counter argument. If the wiki is going to be an official replacement for adequate information in the game, then Paradox needs to update it when they put out a new release. It's been over a week since 2.2 came out, and the "official" source of info doesn't have a lot of the info the players need.

it stil fits what is needed/requested:

• In game: check
• Offline accesible: check
• Tels prerequisites: check
• Tels weights:check
• Being updated: check (albeit slowly)
• Can see what is outdated info: check (it will tell you for what version of the game the section was last updated)

I vastly prefer the team to fix bugs and performance issues before updating everything in the wiki.
I'm not gonna say "use your brain" but c'mon, applying a bit of logic gets you far in the research sytem.
I do agree some things are less obvious,like the xenomorphs being behind uplifting. But... who would've guessed that Anti-grav engineering (a tech that increases housing) could be locked behind the previous tech that increases housing?

 

[Oracel]

You do reach limits. You can't always make a ship bigger. Eventually, they start breaking because you don't know how to make them strong or rigid enough. Or you do know, but it makes them so heavy they are pretty much immobile.

Well obviously you reach limits. But that does not mean that you cannot research on pushing these limits. It is precisely research which will give you the knowledge to make them bigger, while not breaking apart. However, that does not mean you can research everything always in a reasonable time and resource frame. This is where - in the system I proposed - the scientists prediction will come in. Think of it like a ahead-of-time-penalty in HoI IV: you can start researching it, but the scientists will tell you that they will need a very long time and a lot of additional resources, since important groundwork for the project hasn't been laid yet. So when you can think of something, you can always start researching it - it may just be extremely inefficient. Most importantly though it stays the player's choice, when to start the project and not that of a random number generator.

Yeah. I agree that naval engineers can't be easily reassigned to do food tech. but this is a Grand Strategy game, not a Research Simulation. You've got to make simplifications.

True. But wouldn't it make more sense and be even simpler to let the player decide whether he wants to research naval or food tech? If this really is a Grand Strategy Game, where is the "strategy"-part, when the whole tech-system is that random?

It'd keep a bit of uncertainty for the first few playthroughs, but then the player would know the tech progression and the question marks would just be cosmetic. Meh.

Personally I agree and I would not need question marks, but people in this thread stated that they don't want a tech tree, in order to keep the idea of uncertainty. I tried to bring both together here. But maybe you can think of these question marks as something that you (from your experience of previous playthroughs) may imagine, but that is still out of bounds for your people. They can't imagine that tech yet. So it would be more like a roleplaying-thing.

 

[BlackUmbrellas]

True. But wouldn't it make more sense and be even simpler to let the player decide whether he wants to research naval or food tech? If this really is a Grand Strategy Game, where is the "strategy"-part, when the whole tech-system is that random?

If you assign a scientist with the right specialty to research, they're more likely to come up with ideas in that field.

 

[Ryn]

Here's a novel idea. How about the community use the great modding capabilities of Stellaris to mod it in? Turns out people already thought of that, and there's already at least one mod for it in the workshop. No need to bother the devs for it, they can continue on doing the real work.

 

[Grumpus Ryche]

Oh, gimme a break with the "realism" and "immersion" arguments. We're operating in a universe where fleets cross a galaxy in a few hundred days and yet weapons take days to cycle fire. We're playing a game where I can shoehorn a few trillion meatbags into a habitat and turn them into infinity energy (I'm at 1600 pops and looking for more to add). Someone asked for a better in-game visual representation of the research tree. That's it. You won't use it? Fine, don't use it, but don't kneecap people who would. It also seems to me that those wanting the "uncertainty" only want that uncertainty for others because they already have it figured out. They had to do it the hard way, so everyone else should, too.

Edit: since I posted this, the number of "pops" lined up for purging in a single habitat went from about 1600 to 2200. Yes, this single habitat is generating 17k energy per month from trillions of hapless meatbags. Tell me more about why we shouldn't have a visual representation of the tech tree because "realism".