Technology leaking

[Shaeliss]

So, this is basically a "once technology is researched by at least one empire, it should slowly spread to other empires and be easier to research" suggestion.

Lore-wise, information wants to be free, and there should be some information leaking and reverse-engineering of various technologies going on. When everyone in the galaxy has had robotic workers for several decades, at this point the technology has long since stopped being classified and "researching" it should mostly be a matter of copying everyone else's homework. Especially if the GalCom does it's very best to share the homework around.

Gameplay wise, being the first to research a technology should absolutely give you an immediate advantage, while allowing later comers (enlightened primitives, Prospectoriums...) to more easily adopt techs that have been adopted by literally everyone else for the last few decades, giving empires behind the curve a catchup that makes logical sense while still leaving plenty of times for the early adopters to capitalize on their head start.

So, how should it work in practice?

I propose each tech should have a "leak" value that every empire (with a handful of exceptions) that has researched it contributes to, until that tech has fully leaked (and could be given a flag to save calculation power). The more a tech has "leaked", the more it's tech cost would be reduced for the purpose of actually researching it, up to some large value (-80%? More? Less?). More advanced (read: expensive) techs need more "leak points" to get reduced costs.

The base leaking rate would be such that it would take a century before you alone made a technology easily available by researching it. Blame pirates, blame smugglers, blame industrial/corporate (not capitalized to differentiate with Corporate authority, a lot of companies spy on each other all the time even if it's illegal) espionnage, but your technology gets around. Some decisions would increase it (most diplomatic agreements would contribute to said leaking, especially Federations, Commercial Pacts (you are giving a lot of goods away that may be reverse-engineered or contain information) and, the biggest one, research agreements (you are literally sharing your homework, and someone else might catch a glimpse of it and copy it)), so would the Unchained Knowledge resolutions (since a lot of them have a "let's share research notes" flavor text, and empires "behind" on tech have an extra incentive (weight for the AI) to vote in favour of them), while isolationist/genocidal policies, Information Quarantine and other heavy-handed censorship policies/edicts would reduce it, while having a mostly incomprehensible technology (i.e. Fallen Empires and empires with Enigmatic Engineering) would kill it in it's tracks.

To simulate empires having agreements with a tech-leading empire having an easier time reading their homework and copying it than everyone else (even if everyone else still can), having treaties with such an empire would make them treat technology leaks for techs their friends have as higher than it really is (so, maybe treat tech leak as 1.5 what it really is if research agreement (number not final)). This would allow you to share tech with your friends more easily, or on the contrary to jealously guard your advanced technologies for as long as possible.

 

[mammonmachine]

I think this is, at core, a good suggestion. At the moment, one issue is the superiority of the tech rush, and introducing some measure of technology 'leakage' would help this. I'm a little unsure about whether the mechanisms for achieving this make sense, but perhaps they just need to be laid out a bit more clearly (e.g. bullet-pointed in more schematic lists).

I think 80% of total value for leaking alone is a little high; a lot of the challenge of introducing a new tech is not knowing the theory, but being able to introduce the infrastructure to utilise it. That's why it make sense for research costs to scale with empire size. I would suggest 50% as a better max, which can still be added to with research agreements. Something like 80-85% would make sense as a cap for leaking + research agreements, as ultimately some work does need to be done!

A useful concept might be the openness of a society, measured in part by number of migration, commercial and research treaties, and modified by authority and civics. An open society's tech is more likely to leak, as it is discussed more freely, used commercially etc. A closed society might be less prone to leaking, but there should be a price, namely that the bonus from leaked tech is greatly reduced.

 

[Shaeliss]

A useful concept might be the openness of a society, measured in part by number of migration, commercial and research treaties, and modified by authority and civics. An open society's tech is more likely to leak, as it is discussed more freely, used commercially etc. A closed society might be less prone to leaking, but there should be a price, namely that the bonus from leaked tech is greatly reduced.

True, I should have gone through it with a more bullet point layout, but other than civics (which I'm not fully familiar with) I did consider society's openness in terms of agreements, policies, edicts and GalCom... Enigmatic Engineering/Fallen Empires trump "regular" openness.

So let's go with bullet point:

* Even a closed society isn't "fully" closed. Subversive elements and mistakes will contribute a base "leaking" rate.
* censorship/dystopian edicts (info quarantine, tracking implants, Thought Enforcement) and some authoritarian themed civics (Police State for example) reduce leaking rate.
* So do Isolationist policies/stances/civics.
* Gestalts are probably the least leaky societies for obvious reasons.
* Genocidals don't leak that much either for obvious reasons.
* Gestalt Genocidals double dip there.
* all kinds of diplomatic agreements contribute some degree of leaking, some more than othees.
* Unchained Knowledge GalCom resolutions induce extra leaking.
* Enigmatic Engineering makes you outright stop keaking tech.

And to quote the standard paradox disclaimer, "numbers are not final".

 

[GhostDanny]

I don't think Gestalts should be automatically the most leak proof.
Hiveminds might just like to expand it's colonies and not care if some some older equipment is left somewhere.
Machine intelligences probably has plenty of radio transmissions to listen in on, encrypted offcourse but if your codebreaking is higher.

Genocidals might not care, thinking they're superior regardless to the "filthy Xeno's".

 

[Shaeliss]

I don't think Gestalts should be automatically the most leak proof.
Hiveminds might just like to expand it's colonies and not care if some some older equipment is left somewhere.
Machine intelligences probably has plenty of radio transmissions to listen in on, encrypted offcourse but if your codebreaking is higher.

Genocidals might not care, thinking they're superior regardless to the "filthy Xeno's".

The way the tech leaking males sense in my idea is, the more open (intentially or otherwise) an empire is, the more leaky it is with it's tech, individualist empires can use poor passwords, have criminals steal and sell valuable stuff (pirates) and embezzle valuable stuff (smuggling), or plain sell trade secrets to the highest bidder, which gestalt don't have, and empires that plain shoot/eat on sight have less interactions that would allow them to leak tech.

 

[GhostDanny]

The way the tech leaking males sense in my idea is, the more open (intentially or otherwise) an empire is, the more leaky it is with it's tech, individualist empires can use poor passwords, have criminals steal and sell valuable stuff (pirates) and embezzle valuable stuff (smuggling), or plain sell trade secrets to the highest bidder, which gestalt don't have, and empires that plain shoot/eat on sight have less interactions that would allow them to leak tech.

A Gestalt drone is like a singular cell in your body, you don't notice all the countless skin flakes you shed on a daily basis either, do you?
Any waste you produce still contains countless things, which you just flush down the toilet.

 

[tanny]

Maybe some empires believe in “open source”, some people literally consider it immoral to distribute software without the source code (YES, I’m serious, take a look at the free software foundation if you’re doubtful). These factors could massively contribute it.
On the other hand, things like enigmatic engineering should be something more meaningful than “Yeah… we just made our engineering so cryptic so you can’t understand it, and we gonna be annoying researchers for everyone” to something like “Oh, we got this technology, you probably wouldn’t understand it, so don’t try, for your own sake.” After all, why go through the length of obfuscating technologies to this level if not for something? I’d prefer there would be some tangible benefits to it.

 

[Kabian]

So overall how i would make "leaking" would be by how encryption/codebreaking works and their own diplomacy:

The more encryption an empire has-> the less leaking it occurs
The more codebreaking an empire has -> the more bonus it gets from leaking

The more open diplomacy an empire has -> the more leaking
The more closed diplomacy an empire has -> lesser leaking

Active diplomatic pacts grant leaking to both sides

Enigmatic engineering stops leaking,
shared destiny greatly increases leaking to subjets, increases it for everyone else in a lesser way

Stealing technology gives a bonus to the tech leak you get from the targeted empire instead of 10% research speed

What is leaking?

For me leaking is you passively gain research progress in all researchs you complete the requisite for and an empire you have contact with has researched, eventually completing that research on its own (passive research instead of active research)

 

[Shaeliss]

So overall how i would make "leaking" would be by how encryption/codebreaking works and their own diplomacy:

The more encryption an empire has-> the less leaking it occurs
The more codebreaking an empire has -> the more bonus it gets from leaking

The more open diplomacy an empire has -> the more leaking
The more closed diplomacy an empire has -> lesser leaking

Active diplomatic pacts grant leaking to both sides

Enigmatic engineering stops leaking,

So far so good.

shared destiny greatly increases leaking to subjets, increases it for everyone else in a lesser way

Stealing technology gives a bonus to the tech leak you get from the targeted empire instead of 10% research speed

Good calls.

What is leaking?

For me leaking is you passively gain research progress in all researchs you complete the requisite for and an empire you have contact with has researched, eventually completing that research on its own (passive research instead of active research)

Well, that could also work.

 

[NotAYakk]

Starting from a different perspective, imagine if the default assumption was that tech leaked perfectly. All research in the galaxy was pooled.

You could model the cost of technologies required to get a certain rate of progress on a galaxy-wide scale. What you research would change your "vote" on what technology gets researched.

Now, add in barriers to tech flow. When you research a technology, you gain access to it earlier then everyone else does. How much earlier? It depends on how leaky technology is between you and the other civilizations. Civilizations with more contact with your empire (proximity, war, trade, open borders, treaties) would get the technology leaked faster. Even just being able to see the technology used on sensors would be of great value.

Directing your researchers at a known technology would speed up getting it significantly.

...

Under this model, it is research that leaks more than tech. This naturally makes the fallen empires not spread their tech around, as they don't do research.

Imagine if for every point of research you generate, every other empire gets research points spread over tech that you have and they don't proportional to your empires research multipliers, times a multiplier (for example, 0.25). If your research cost is 2x baseline, and theirs is 1x, they get 1 point of physics research for every 8 you produce.

If there are 10 civilizations all producing 300 physics research each at 1x, everyone is getting 675 physics research from "tech leak" every month, 75 per other empire.

Each empire's leaked research is spread over techs they have and you don't have, maybe semi-randomly (like, pick 3 techs at random, one gets 50%, the next 30% the next 20%). Possibly a larger serving is placed on any tech you are actively researching.

Then you rescale technologies based on this assumption of a huge amount of leaked technology.

You'll note that researching still gets you ahead, but not nearly as much as it did before.

The very cute thing about this is that freeloading -- just soaking up free tech -- becomes very meta, but it is a trap because of the crisises and the like.

High tech empires end up doing the work for everyone else while everyone else freeloads. So long as there are some high tech empires, technology progresses. And those high tech empires end up with fancier ships before everyone else.

If the leak rate is 25%, and there are 4 high-tech empires, then low-tech have half the tech of high tech!

 

[mammonmachine]

It has occurred to me on this question that my suggestion for thinking about the open or closedness of a society is already modelled in a pretty simple fashion with an existing mechanic, namely intel. The idea would be that tech/research leaks purely according to intelligence levels between different empires. It would possible to make another mechanic that traces it more accurately, but I think the benefit of this is not worth having another bit of complexity for players to get their head round. Of course, you could have specific modifiers to the leak rate - Enigmatic Engineering would be the most obvious - but these should be few and far between.

 

[NotAYakk]

The point is to make tech leak; the existing tech leak system is insanely slow it might as well not exist. (mostly it leaks Options, not Research rate)

Even stealing tech is extremely slow (30% of one per 5 years)

About the only rapid tech transfer is ship debris. So much so that I stop researching ship components once I can win wars.