Weapons Tech Being Totally Separate From Racial Tech Is A Design Smell

[Calm]

I certainly wouldn't want to see the races homogenized by making all weapons tech available to everyone.

Candidly, I don't see how this homogenizes them at all. Getting access to the full Psionic tree when you capture Kir'Ko makes them more different, not less, because now when you get them, they can be teleporting and mind controlling---rather than just putting on more armor like some boring human. Meanwhile, mod restrictions preserve race differentiation---you might have access to the Psionic tree, but your Assembly units don't. All the weapons unlocks in the world won't let your Amazons use Firearms mods, or give Indentured access to explosives.

There's also a wooooooooorld of nuance in "how easy" it is to access other race's tech. Right now, you capture a city, absorb, it and boom! All you need are labs and time, and presto, full access. Whereas I've been playing around in the mod editor, and it's entirely possible to do things like add bonuses/maluses to racial research dependent on your relations with them, whether you started as them, whether you're at war/allied with them, how many cities you have of them, etc. You can even straight-up require these sort of things for tech/unit access if you want---even at the level of individual techs and units. I don't think we disagree that homogenization is bad. But I think there's a lot of room to explore in changing the ways we go about preventing it. Some are better than others.

Where you *do* get homogenization right now is in tactical and strategic ops. It breaks suspension a bit to have basically equal access to them. Why not make them cost more/less depending on how many cities you have of that race, or make an "ops center" building that makes racial ops easier?

Anyway, I am fully in favor of not homogenizing the races. But I don't think "dichotomous full access or complete barring from the weapons trees," of all things, is the best way to do it.

(Actually, I am kind of coming around to a different direction---what if the secret techs were "promiscuous but hard"---that is, anyone could research them, but they were hard, slow, painful---unless you got access to anomalous locations/cosmite/were willing to build expensive buildings, etc---while racial techs were "easy but coy" ---that is, more dependent on cities/morale/relations/investment/OG as that race, as opposed to special resources or something.)

 

[Cainist]

Candidly, I don't see how this homogenizes them at all. Getting access to the full Psionic tree when you capture Kir'Ko makes them more different, not less, because now when you get them, they can be teleporting and mind controlling---rather than just strapping on jetpacks like some boring human. Meanwhile, mod restrictions preserve race differentiation---you might have access to the Psionic tree, but your Assembly units don't. All the weapons unlocks in the world won't let your Amazons use Firearms mods, or give Indentured access to explosives.

There's also a wooooooooorld of nuance in "how easy" it is to access other race's tech. Right now, you capture a city, absorb, it and boom! All you need are labs and time, and presto, full access. Whereas I've been playing around in the mod editor, and it's entirely possible to do things like add bonuses/maluses to racial research dependent on your relations with them, whether you started as them, whether you're at war/allied with them, how many cities you have of them, etc. You can even straight-up require these sort of things for tech/unit access if you want---even at the level of individual techs and units. I don't think we disagree that homogenization is bad. But I think there's a lot of room to explore in changing the ways we go about preventing it. Some are better than others.

Where you *do* get homogenization right now is in tactical and strategic ops. It breaks suspension a bit to have basically equal access to them. Why not make them cost more/less depending on how many cities you have of that race, or make an "ops center" building that makes racial ops easier?

Anyway, I am fully in favor of not homogenizing the races. But I don't think "dichotomous full access or complete barring from the weapons trees," of all things, is the best way to do it.

(Actually, I am kind of coming around to a different direction---what if the secret techs were "promiscuous but hard"---that is, anyone could research them, but they were hard, slow, painful---unless you got access to anomalous locations/cosmite/were willing to build expensive buildings, etc---while racial techs were "easy but coy" ---that is, more dependent on cities/morale/relations/investment/OG as that race, as opposed to special resources or something.)

"I don't see how this homogenizes them at all"- Right now, weapons tech and societal research are the only techs your CAN'T get by capturing (or simply buying with influence) a city. Making weapons tech universal (provided you've acquired a city of the appropriate race) removes one of the only distinctions that come from what race you chose. How is that NOT homogenization? Think of it this way: Under the system as is, asses the differences between a player who chooses vanguard and acquires a kir'ko city vs a player who chooses kir'ko and acquires a vanguard city. Now, under the system the OP proposes, are these players more alike or different? That is why the OP's system favors homoginization.
Whether the weapons tech should be the inviolable line in the sand isn't what we were discussing. Personaly I like one poster's suggestion and just being able to unlock a few random techs when capturing a city.
Bottom line, capturing a city of one race shouldn't unlock the width and bredth of their tech, as if you had chosen it.
Could there be a more nuanced system in place regarding captured cities and research? Sure.
Does the game need this? Not from where I'm standing.
Should we open the floodgates and let everyone research everything? Hell no.

 

[FerrokenFibrous]

Candidly, I don't see how this homogenizes them at all. Getting access to the full Psionic tree when you capture Kir'Ko makes them more different, not less, because now when you get them, they can be teleporting and mind controlling---rather than just strapping on jetpacks like some boring human. Meanwhile, mod restrictions preserve race differentiation---you might have access to the Psionic tree, but your Assembly units don't. All the weapons unlocks in the world won't let your Amazons use Firearms mods, or give Indentured access to explosives.

There's also a wooooooooorld of nuance in "how easy" it is to access other race's tech. Right now, you capture a city, absorb, it and boom! All you need are labs and time, and presto, full access. Whereas I've been playing around in the mod editor, and it's entirely possible to do things like add bonuses/maluses to racial research dependent on your relations with them, whether you started as them, whether you're at war/allied with them, how many cities you have of them, etc. You can even straight-up require these sort of things for tech/unit access if you want---even at the level of individual techs and units. I don't think we disagree that homogenization is bad. But I think there's a lot of room to explore in changing the ways we go about preventing it. Some are better than others.

Where you *do* get homogenization right now is in tactical and strategic ops. It breaks suspension a bit to have basically equal access to them. Why not make them cost more/less depending on how many cities you have of that race, or make an "ops center" building that makes racial ops easier?

Anyway, I am fully in favor of not homogenizing the races. But I don't think "dichotomous full access or complete barring from the weapons trees," of all things, is the best way to do it.

(Actually, I am kind of coming around to a different direction---what if the secret techs were "promiscuous but hard"---that is, anyone could research them, but they were hard, slow, painful---unless you got access to anomalous locations/cosmite/were willing to build expensive buildings, etc---while racial techs were "easy but coy" ---that is, more dependent on cities/morale/relations/investment/OG as that race, as opposed to special resources or something.)

Getting only the weapon techs or otherwise being much more limited in what racial techs you get would gimp and kinda defeat the purpose of the Shakarn's specialty. And making ease of racial tech access dependent on race relations and stuff kinda also hurts in that regard since their playstyle favours migrating and razing more than the other races.

Maybe if full or mostly-full access to other races' mods was a thing mostly unique to them, and infiltrating the other races' operations centre also gave them a bonus to research speed in addition to the inherent one they get (while negating research penalties from race relations), then maybe they wouldn't be gimped as much by this idea.

I for one, am not keen on infiltrating the Dvar only to get nothing but firearm and explosive mods that are completely useless for my omni and sonic weapons.

Edit: Also, to be honest, I think it's more exciting, interesting and actually less homogeneous to spec the units of other races differently. Like Vanguard Troopers with control collars as Syndicate, or Transcendents with Jetpacks as Vanguard, as opposed to doing the same cookie cutter layout of weapon mods on them every time regardless of your starting race. The opposite where you use other races' mods on your main troops is pretty fun as Shakarn too. Depending on who my neighbours are, I might end up equipping my lizard bois with Kir'ko regen very early on in one match, Assembly crit chance eyeballs in another, Vanguard Nanites and Jetpacks in the next, and so on.

 

[Cainist]

Getting only the weapon techs or otherwise being much more limited in what racial techs you get would gimp and kinda defeat the purpose of the Shakarn's specialty. And making ease of racial tech access dependent on race relations and stuff kinda also hurts in that regard since their playstyle favours migrating and razing more than the other races.

Maybe if full or mostly-full access to other races' mods was a thing mostly unique to them, and infiltrating the other races' operations centre also gave them a bonus to research speed in addition to the inherent one they get (while negating research penalties from race relations), then maybe they wouldn't be gimped as much by this idea.

I for one, am not keen on infiltrating the Dvar only to get nothing but firearm and explosive mods that are completely useless for my omni and sonic weapons.

Ok.
I wasn't really advocating anything. Again, my position is that the OP's proposed change, would be bad for the game. If they did decided to make techs more or less exclusive, I'm sure they could figure a way to make Shakarn fit the new system.

 

[FerrokenFibrous]

Ok.
I wasn't really advocating anything. Again, my position is that the OP's proposed change, would be bad for the game. If they did decided to make techs more or less exclusive, I'm sure they could figure a way to make Shakarn fit the new system.

I never said anything about you advocating something, but yeah I too don't fully agree with his idea. Makes me wonder what kind of changes would be made to Shakarn in accordance with said new system though. Either way, I'm content with the way the tech tree functions as it is, especially in regards to the reptilian overlords.

 

[Calm]

I think it's worth pointing out that you two are criticizing the idea from *opposite directions*---one from the direction that it would homogenize too much, and one from the direction that it would hinder tech mixing.

Which is fine, nobody made a rule saying you have to agree with each other, but it's probably a sign that there's some nuance here worth exploring.

...which doesn't mean you should trust *me*, I'm just some rando on the internet, I too have loved games only to see whiners gain the ear of the devs and ruin them. I get it.

Anyway, today I made a mod where you get weapon techs on conquering the city of a race that starts with them. Haven't played it yet, as I'm deep in a Vanguard/Psynumbra game I want to finish. And I meant what I said about making racial techs less free and easy, but that will take more time in the mod editor.

 

[Cainist]

I think it's worth pointing out that you two are criticizing the idea from *opposite directions*---one from the direction that it would homogenize too much, and one from the direction that it would hinder tech mixing.

Which is fine, nobody made a rule saying you have to agree with each other, but it's probably a sign that there's some nuance here worth exploring.

...which doesn't mean you should trust *me*, I'm just some rando on the internet, I too have loved games only to see whiners gain the ear of the devs and ruin them. I get it.

Anyway, today I made a mod where you get weapon techs on conquering the city of a race that starts with them. Haven't played it yet, as I'm deep in a Vanguard/Psynumbra game I want to finish. And I meant what I said about making racial techs less free and easy, but that will take more time in the mod editor.

That's another thing: I'm probably a little quicker to defend the game's balance as is because I'm on console. I you pc guys don't like something, you can mod it. If the devs make I change, I'm stuck with it.

 

[NINJEW]

really the key thing here is if you're playing as kirko and you absorb a vanguard settlement, access to nanites lets you improve your kirko units, while access to flechettes would not, and that kind of cross race interplay is what makes getting a new race exciting. getting vanguard units and also mods that are only helpful for vanguard units would be really boring, it'd mean you either ignore the vanguard access entirely or you just hard swap over to going all in on vanguard, because you're not going to utilize those exclusive mods well otherwise.

I would love to see a response to this point

 

[Calm]

>

really the key thing here is if you're playing as kirko and you absorb a vanguard settlement, access to nanites lets you improve your kirko units, while access to flechettes would not, and that kind of cross race interplay is what makes getting a new race exciting. getting vanguard units and also mods that are only helpful for vanguard units would be really boring, it'd mean you either ignore the vanguard access entirely or you just hard swap over to going all in on vanguard, because you're not going to utilize those exclusive mods well otherwise.

> I would love to see a response to this point

Sure.

For the specific example: why not get access to nanites? It's a T1 tech, Vanguard probably teach it to their schoolchildren.

I agree entirely, btw, that cross-race interplay is a big part of what makes the game fun, and that those sort of binary all-or-nothing situations are no bueno.

But I'm saying that's where we are now.

Defense and offense are both necessary to make a race "work." Different races will have those distributed in different measure between their racial and weapons trees. Some of the strongest "defensive" techs for Syndicate and Kir'Ko, for instance, are in the Psionics "weapons" tree, the Clarity and Life mantras. Their offense is in a bunch of different places, but it's important to point out that a good chunk of it is in their racial trees----psionic/melee attacks, armor ablation, exploitive targeting system.

But for, say Vanguard, alllllll their offense is the weapons trees, up until...Valkyrie? Launcher Turret? Like seriously, that's the closest I can find.

The thing, is, Sun Tzu was right, attack is defense and defense is attack. Defense enables you to attack (because you're alive), and defense must include attacking in *some* form, or you'll just be "defending" forever and die.

The Vanguard "defense" is: shooting stuff. Overwatch, engineer turrets, taking cover so you can shoot next turn. The Vanguard offense is also damage----moving up you can shoot, using smoke so you can shoot, or so you can move (so you can shoot). Because they do everything through damage, having the right ammo, for Vanguard, is a *huge* deal. Yes, nanites are more impactful early-game, when enemy defenses are weak and battles are small. But as things scale up, it becomes clear how damage-dependent they are.

And let me make this clear: this is fine! It's how conventional-military humans *should* play.

But let's say, late-game, you're playing Kir'Ko, and you absorb a Vanguard settlement. Are nanites good? Yeah, sure, you'll be glad you got 'em. You'll probably stick 'em on Ravenous and eat everything while damage-resistant. You'll be glad you got nanites.

Will you be glad you got troopers? Or Engineers? Or OWLs? Or bikes?
Probably not. You can put regen mods on them, but...why? Whatever you're trying to achieve, it would probably be better accomplished by just putting nanites and a jetpack on a Frenzied. There's just no real reason to make guys whose main schtick is "we have guns" if the guns are kind of gonna suck.

Adding Kir'ko mods won't fix this. Great, you have regenerating troopers---whose guns still suck! Fire-resistant! Absorb Pain! Adaptive Carapace! Shrouded step obscure! Clarity accuracy! None of it matters without the guns.

Of course, add the guns and everything changes. Regenerating troopers with good guns are amazing. Troopers with psionic buffs and good guns are terrifying. Engineers defending your Barrager with good turrets and shotguns is powerful.

Now, maybe you don't actually want to build Vanguard units, you just want to mod up your bugs. Well, some of us do!

And there's no reason it has to be either/or. You can still have nanites! The way I'm thinking these days is: grant access to weapons trees when you capture a race. Also grant access to racial trees when you capture a race. If this feels like it takes away the importance of initial race selection, there are much cleaner and better-targeted ways to handle that---can give a research bonus/penalty for researching racial tech (and weapons tech is racial tech), can give bonuses/penalties based on race relation, # of cities, *whatever.* It's a valuable and worthwhile goal to keep the races distinct, make starting race matter, and safeguard against out-of-control synergy. Gating weapons tech is...not a great way to do it.

 

[NINJEW]

Dude building vanguard bikes when you started kirko and have access to adaptive carapace sounds baller as hell, absolutely I would do that forget laser mods

Hell since I started kirko I can pair those bikes with transcendents or hidden that have mantra of life and mantra of clarity equipped. That sounds stupid nasty. For buffed damage you'll have to look to ST but if you're talking about absorbing a vanguard city and building their units you're pretty late into the game anyway, it's not much trouble to tech into ST a bit.

 

[Jolly Joker]

Yes, I agree, that was my reason to complain half a year ago about getting the full race research ladder when you conquer a town of another race. You don't have to invest a lot of research and get the all-useful racial low-tier mods, while you ALSO have no problems to build the basic units of the conquered town and equip them with the mods of your starting race. I found that very strong and potentially decisive.

 

[krissless]

If im not mistaken you can trade weapons tech tree mod's. But first your hero must equip and uneqip them.

 

[NINJEW]

Yes, I agree, that was my reason to complain half a year ago about getting the full race research ladder when you conquer a town of another race. You don't have to invest a lot of research and get the all-useful racial low-tier mods, while you ALSO have no problems to build the basic units of the conquered town and equip them with the mods of your starting race. I found that very strong and potentially decisive.

I mean if you conquered a city that's already setup to be a unit factory sure, but otherwise getting a city to the point where you can get a reasonable number of assault bikes out of it or whatever takes long enough that I wouldn't really call it "decisive" or even really "optimal"

 

[Jolly Joker]

The key word here is "optional". You don't have to do it - just when the situation is right. So nothing to lose, just something to gain.

 

[NINJEW]

Well yes I should hope that in some circumstance somewhere you gain something, otherwise what's the point of being allowed to do it

You didnt mistake "optimal" for "optional" did you?

 

[Cainist]

>

> I would love to see a response to this point

Sure.

For the specific example: why not get access to nanites? It's a T1 tech, Vanguard probably teach it to their schoolchildren.

I agree entirely, btw, that cross-race interplay is a big part of what makes the game fun, and that those sort of binary all-or-nothing situations are no bueno.

But I'm saying that's where we are now.

Defense and offense are both necessary to make a race "work." Different races will have those distributed in different measure between their racial and weapons trees. Some of the strongest "defensive" techs for Syndicate and Kir'Ko, for instance, are in the Psionics "weapons" tree, the Clarity and Life mantras. Their offense is in a bunch of different places, but it's important to point out that a good chunk of it is in their racial trees----psionic/melee attacks, armor ablation, exploitive targeting system.

But for, say Vanguard, alllllll their offense is the weapons trees, up until...Valkyrie? Launcher Turret? Like seriously, that's the closest I can find.

The thing, is, Sun Tzu was right, attack is defense and defense is attack. Defense enables you to attack (because you're alive), and defense must include attacking in *some* form, or you'll just be "defending" forever and die.

The Vanguard "defense" is: shooting stuff. Overwatch, engineer turrets, taking cover so you can shoot next turn. The Vanguard offense is also damage----moving up you can shoot, using smoke so you can shoot, or so you can move (so you can shoot). Because they do everything through damage, having the right ammo, for Vanguard, is a *huge* deal. Yes, nanites are more impactful early-game, when enemy defenses are weak and battles are small. But as things scale up, it becomes clear how damage-dependent they are.

And let me make this clear: this is fine! It's how conventional-military humans *should* play.

But let's say, late-game, you're playing Kir'Ko, and you absorb a Vanguard settlement. Are nanites good? Yeah, sure, you'll be glad you got 'em. You'll probably stick 'em on Ravenous and eat everything while damage-resistant. You'll be glad you got nanites.

Will you be glad you got troopers? Or Engineers? Or OWLs? Or bikes?
Probably not. You can put regen mods on them, but...why? Whatever you're trying to achieve, it would probably be better accomplished by just putting nanites and a jetpack on a Frenzied. There's just no real reason to make guys whose main schtick is "we have guns" if the guns are kind of gonna suck.

Adding Kir'ko mods won't fix this. Great, you have regenerating troopers---whose guns still suck! Fire-resistant! Absorb Pain! Adaptive Carapace! Shrouded step obscure! Clarity accuracy! None of it matters without the guns.

Of course, add the guns and everything changes. Regenerating troopers with good guns are amazing. Troopers with psionic buffs and good guns are terrifying. Engineers defending your Barrager with good turrets and shotguns is powerful.

Now, maybe you don't actually want to build Vanguard units, you just want to mod up your bugs. Well, some of us do!

And there's no reason it has to be either/or. You can still have nanites! The way I'm thinking these days is: grant access to weapons trees when you capture a race. Also grant access to racial trees when you capture a race. If this feels like it takes away the importance of initial race selection, there are much cleaner and better-targeted ways to handle that---can give a research bonus/penalty for researching racial tech (and weapons tech is racial tech), can give bonuses/penalties based on race relation, # of cities, *whatever.* It's a valuable and worthwhile goal to keep the races distinct, make starting race matter, and safeguard against out-of-control synergy. Gating weapons tech is...not a great way to do it.

You seem pretty fixated on this kir'ko/vanguard hybrid empire. If you don't want to take into consideration the mods you can get from your secret tech or NPC factions then, yes it is difficult to play the way you seem to want ( specifically equipping offensive mods on vanguard units). Kir'ko offensive mods are mostly (if not all) melee. Vanguard is about as far away from melee focused as it gets. Maybe this just isn't a good strategy. I'm trying not to come up with a simplistic answer like "change your gameplay style rather than suggesting that the game be changed to fit you" but I keep kinda coming back to that general idea. What about playing as vanguard and claiming a kir'ko city? That way you have all the firearms mods you want and you can use the kir'ko racial mods to buff those units kirko units. Ultimately the "problem" you describe seems very specific to your strategy and, rather than work within the framework of the game (npc, secret tech, OTHER racial mods besides kirko) you would have the game altered. As far as I can tell, the proposed change would significantly lessen the replay of the game. As the races become more homogenized (and I don't see how a game where no matter what race you choose, you are able to field the exact same army, can be called anything else) each playthrough becomes less distinct.
But hey, what do I know. Maybe we can get a dev to post in here. Not necessarily to weigh in but maybe to provide some info about what the thought process was that lead to the system we have now.

 

[Calm]

For anyone keeping track of this discussion, I made a mod: https://mods.paradoxplaza.com/mods/8344/Any/

This mod changes how cross-racial tech works.



It's driven by a couple goals and thoughts:



--- Some races are very dependent on their weapons trees. There's also nothing particularly "racial" about them---certainly no more than their actual, you know, racial tree. If the Kir'Ko can teach you about regeneration, they can teach you about poisons.



--- On the other hand, the races seem trivialized by the ease with which you can fly down other races' tech trees, especially late-game. Amazons should be better at researching Tyrannodons than Vanguard!



To these ends, the mod consists of three changes:



1. When you conquer a base of another race, you gain access to not only their racial tech tree, but also their weapons trees.



2. Bases get an 80% research penalty when researching tech of other races, or for weapons trees their race doesn't start with--i.e, if you're researching an Assembly or Arc tech, your Dvar bases will be handicapped.



3. For Shakarn bases, the penalty is only 40%.



I anticipate some hard choices when capturing an enemy base---do I keep it and live with the research penalty? Do I migrate it? Do I research *their* techs? Further, players are incentivized to conquer more bases of race if they really want to go down that path.



I'm still playing around with this and expect to expand on it in the future, but for now, here it is.

 

[Sandman25DCSSS]

I wonder if OP plays enormous maps with 12 players where you have colonies of every race and it is still not clear who is going to win, every game would be similar then, you would have access to all weapon tree and all race trees in every game.
Yesterday I learned another reason why I wouldn't like to get weapon techs from capturing colonies - voidbringers. As Shakarns I am using Bastions despite having little mod support for them, with ability to use firearms tree it would be a no brainer.

 

[Ethorin]

For anyone keeping track of this discussion, I made a mod: https://mods.paradoxplaza.com/mods/8344/Any/

I subbed, not sure it'll make me change the way I play but figured I might as well try it out.

 

[Calm]

Glad to hear it!

I subbed, not sure it'll make me change the way I play but figured I might as well try it out.

Glad to hear it! I'll be interested to hear your thoughts. I play with it on and 100% don't regret it.

A couple other things I've been thinking about putting some effort into

- making Secret Tech much harder to research, but it can be sped up somehow (ancient artifacts? more ST-specific locations? Expensive research facilities?)

- adding some texture to the ops system---maybe add a base facility that increases op strength in a radius, or make a "Logistics support" unit mod that acts like the Syndicate hero ability.

- really ambitious, but an orbital layer still holds great appeal...