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[Fniff]

Bay12 actually tends to be an exception to a lot of things. We don't have many trolls, only spambots (And they're easy to deal with). We're fairly acceptive to new people yet we don't have that sort of cold feeling that sufficiently large forums have. Bay12 is an interesting exception in the petri dish that is the internet.

[MrWiggles]

How do you make a research tree interesting?

I've been working on the design of a 4X game, where you start off in the Stone Age, and then win the planet, then conquest for the galaxy.

A Civilization to Master of Orion game. Its been a lot of fun marrying the two feature sets.

I havent done any work on the research tree. I did do some interesting work on World Wonders. I went in this direction of being able select which bonuses the WW gives you, from a pool of limited bonuses, which effect build time.

[Descan]

If you can make the rest of the game sufficiently interesting, you could go the obtuse way. (Hopefully not obnoxious). Make it so you funnel money into, say, weapons technology? A category, and not a specific "You will get a Sword in 5 turns" deal.

Or have, at least the early game, research be accidental, and up to NPCs in the game going up to you and saying "Sire! I've discovered this dark powder that ignites most spectacularly! There MUST be some use for it!" and giving you the option to fund it or not. (Obviously there'd have to be dead-end researches, like Elixirs of Life (but not that obvious))

This is assuming the research angle isn't the end-all be-all of the game. Which, in a Cave-to-the-Stars game, it might end up being?

[Parsely]

How do you make a research tree interesting?

I've been working on the design of a 4X game, where you start off in the Stone Age, and then win the planet, then conquest for the galaxy.

A Civilization to Master of Orion game. Its been a lot of fun marrying the two feature sets.

I havent done any work on the research tree. I did do some interesting work on World Wonders. I went in this direction of being able select which bonuses the WW gives you, from a pool of limited bonuses, which effect build time.

Link?!! Please do it MoO2 style. I loved that game to death...

[Scelly9]

A serial killer simulator. Every once in a I want to play someone truly Depraved.

[Sirus]

A serial killer simulator. Every once in a I want to play someone truly Depraved.

Manhunt?

[Starver]

(Responding to something now 4xNinjaed, albeit not all these intervening replies seem to be subjectually-similar ninjas, the others just popping in on other things..)

Making a research tree interesting might be a matter of ensuring that pursuing technological expertise in one aspect of the tree precludes another being so well understood.

This could easily be considered 'contrived', so it needs to be thought about, but (as a bad example) going for offensive warrior tech gives you military might, but draws you away from sustainable agricultural methods that you might have developed (past any given point of diversion).  Or biotech experterise (for good or ill) draws your culture into "everything is solved with genetics, including growing buildings", but makes you ignore electronics due to your "brain-inna-vat"-like computational devices.  In the far future you might create wormhole-tech to take you across space and you're by-passing any more refinements of the Big Dumb Rocket tech, including some rather nifty warp-enabled examples of systems that you might have found useful under other circumstances...

(In a concept I've been long developing, this does not actually mean that you'll never get the better agriculture because you went in for the development of hoplite armies, or whatever equivalent example there might be, but that the focus of the civilisation involved gets drawn towards the militaristic aspect of invention...  should a change in research attitude and the society that supports it happen in the future then it may swing back towards the agrarian skillsets, picking up either the original lost tech or some or other era's equivalent stage of such tech, but at the cost of losing knowledge of spear-and-shield warfare to the mists of time, 'rusting' or otherwise becoming pretty much irrelevant.)

Thinking of it, I suspect I've encountered enough examples where, depending on whether one goes for Good or Evil alignment, you get bonus tech of an equivalent association but are excluded from useful items that you might have gotten had you taken a different decision.  (At its most basic, all those choices betwen (say) Nod/GGI or Allies/Axis can be boiled down to this.  Witness the number of times I've played Battlefield 1942 (single-player) and deliberately left a non-vital checkpoint in the opposing AI's hands so I can sneak in and pinch the better type of tank (usually German) that would respawn there, whenever I wish, because the (usually Allied) equivalents just weren't as sexy, even though they were on my side....)

[Lukewarm]

I'd like a first person shooter, but where your arm is almost entirely ragdoll. The only equipment available would be a revolver with a ridiculous kick, but when you managed to shoot something they would be rocked backwards with the force of a shotgun blast to the chest. The enemies would be ragdolls moving forward from a central point in the chest, not even walking but more like floating towards you.  If one should strike another once shot, that one would fall too creating the possibility for domino effects.

[Tsuchigumo550]

I want a cross of tech games and "build a virus" games.

The idea is, you have a setup like Pandemic- but instead of gameplay being mostly a simulation, you instead must find ways to keep your virus silent, while gaining the resources for a game-win condition.

You must maintain three things: Silence, Function, and Ability.

Silence is keeping you're virus as undetectable as possible: by masking a virus as a different problem, changing name and locations of where it stores, making it not do anything noticeable when obtained, etc.

Function is operating to your goal- setting up a botnet, destroying important data, wreaking havoc, or simply making a public fuss.
A botnet configuration is difficult to hide in any stage but the very first of the viruses growth, but it also can grow very quickly and quickly enhance your own abilities to grow. As it forms, you can add a keylogger to your virus for fraud, use any IP on the network to hide, and toy around with any system on your network. Very powerful, but very visible.

Destroying important data is a subset of botnet configurations, except without the connecting to everything all the time. As the infection spreads, it opens doors allowing you to weave a connection through all affected IPs and destroy the end of the line. These are also detectable as the computers in the line are also affected, but can only be seen after your first attack.

Wreaking havoc is a more powerful "making a fuss" that is basically cyberterrorism. Your virus is designed to bring down public works systems such as subways, traffic lights, internet providers, cell towers, and anything computerized. Your virus isn't easy to spread due to it's specialization, which makes it easy to find for basic computers. However, once the virus is in it's target, it's much harder to find. Even when this virus is found, it dosen't give hints to it's true nature well, and may be nearly ignored as a "harmless shell". You'll lose an infected, but dodge a major bullet: people finding out what your virus does.

Making a public fuss is almost a sandbox: your goal is to keep your virus running as long as possible, and threaten dangerous things. You don't need to actually pull off said things, but a virus that CAN be keylogging from bank networks and home computers in a giant fraud scheme is pretty scary.

Ability is a stat that can both help and hurt you: your virus needs updates. Updates can be done multiple ways, some that risk detection and others that lose large portions of your infected- everything has a cost. The less you update, the more your virus can be found and removed, and eventually found out. The more you update, the more resources you eat up at the very least. If a "vaccine" has been found for your virus, an update can make it worthless.
---

To grow your virus, you can do multiple things:
Funding: The more money you have, the better equipment you can get, thus making it harder to find the source of the virus, research takes less time, new options arise, etc.
 IRC Chat: Talk with friends can introduce new ideas to research or speed up current progress, but the chat might not always be secure.
  Testing: You can, with the resources, set up and test your virus against firewalls and security measures. These tests allow you to create better infiltration and stealth.

---

Just something I'd find extremely fun if well executed. A system where you could make a virus that faxes pictures of a photocopied ass around, or one that shuts down global electronics with the flip of a switch.

This game is a blend between Pandemic, a 4X game, and virus-themed games.

[inEQUALITY]

A paradox-esque grand strategy game with a random/procedural map generator akin to Civilization or Dwarf Fortress, with tons of options on world gen and gameplay.

The game would have the tech level range from early tech (like Babylonian empire early) all the way to the near future (mechs are a must-include), with some level of unit customization (Elemental done right), detailed economics and diplomacy (paradox games again), massive RTT Total War-style battles going on in zoomable, pauseable real time with intelligent AI ministers, generals, etc. (okay, so yeah, this is in my dreams)...

Or even ixnay that last bit, make it turn-based or pauseable real-time with Total War-style battles that freeze the campaign while the battle goes on to be somewhat more realistic (as in realistically do-able). I wouldn't even care if the battles were more arcade-y than Total War, so long as they were truly massive.

[Rakonas]

How do you make a research tree interesting?

I've been working on the design of a 4X game, where you start off in the Stone Age, and then win the planet, then conquest for the galaxy.

A Civilization to Master of Orion game. Its been a lot of fun marrying the two feature sets.

I havent done any work on the research tree. I did do some interesting work on World Wonders. I went in this direction of being able select which bonuses the WW gives you, from a pool of limited bonuses, which effect build time.

I think Alpha Centauri makes research interesting by default, where you never research a tech directly but rather have a technological focus. Sword of the Stars also does tech well where tech trees vary and in SotS2 you first have to invest into determining the plausibility of a research project before actual research can be done. CK2 is nice in that tech mostly spreads and government investment is limited. Generally the more dynamic anything is, the more interesting it is, and trying to make it realistic yet good for gameplay also helps.
On the other hand, you can just look at uninteresting tech trees and ensure that you don't incorporate the uninteresting elements. Civilization for instance is pretty bad in terms of being interesting though clearly practical.

[Descan]

Alpha Centauri has an option to disable blind research. So it's not "never".

[Askot Bokbondeler]

How do you make a research tree interesting?

I've been working on the design of a 4X game, where you start off in the Stone Age, and then win the planet, then conquest for the galaxy.

A Civilization to Master of Orion game. Its been a lot of fun marrying the two feature sets.

I havent done any work on the research tree. I did do some interesting work on World Wonders. I went in this direction of being able select which bonuses the WW gives you, from a pool of limited bonuses, which effect build time.

make technology spread to nations you have contact with. have broad categories to invest into instead of specific technologies. make it so that playing in a certain way gives bonuses to related techs: building a lot of the same unit makes it more likely to discover technologies to improve said unit, consistently building cities in a specific terrain type gives you a tech to improve food production in said terrain, building near the sea makes you a better shipwright, etc...
the techtree itself could be boring, techs themselves could simply be "melee weapons +5" etc, but if you make the mechanics of research interesting it would be a bigger boon to gameplay than a fancy techtree. that's my opinion at least.

[MrWiggles]

How do you make a research tree interesting?

I've been working on the design of a 4X game, where you start off in the Stone Age, and then win the planet, then conquest for the galaxy.

A Civilization to Master of Orion game. Its been a lot of fun marrying the two feature sets.

I havent done any work on the research tree. I did do some interesting work on World Wonders. I went in this direction of being able select which bonuses the WW gives you, from a pool of limited bonuses, which effect build time.

Link?!! Please do it MoO2 style. I loved that game to death...

All of my notes are hand written right now. But I can transcribe some of them, if you're interested in particular aspect of the game.

If you can make the rest of the game sufficiently interesting, you could go the obtuse way. (Hopefully not obnoxious). Make it so you funnel money into, say, weapons technology? A category, and not a specific "You will get a Sword in 5 turns" deal.

Or have, at least the early game, research be accidental, and up to NPCs in the game going up to you and saying "Sire! I've discovered this dark powder that ignites most spectacularly! There MUST be some use for it!" and giving you the option to fund it or not. (Obviously there'd have to be dead-end researches, like Elixirs of Life (but not that obvious))

This is assuming the research angle isn't the end-all be-all of the game. Which, in a Cave-to-the-Stars game, it might end up being?

In most 4X, technology is a major component. Technology and number of Cities. So, I'm not sure if that can be avoided, or if it /should/ be avoided.

(Responding to something now 4xNinjaed, albeit not all these intervening replies seem to be subjectually-similar ninjas, the others just popping in on other things..)

Making a research tree interesting might be a matter of ensuring that pursuing technological expertise in one aspect of the tree precludes another being so well understood.

This could easily be considered 'contrived', so it needs to be thought about, but (as a bad example) going for offensive warrior tech gives you military might, but draws you away from sustainable agricultural methods that you might have developed (past any given point of diversion).  Or biotech experterise (for good or ill) draws your culture into "everything is solved with genetics, including growing buildings", but makes you ignore electronics due to your "brain-inna-vat"-like computational devices.  In the far future you might create wormhole-tech to take you across space and you're by-passing any more refinements of the Big Dumb Rocket tech, including some rather nifty warp-enabled examples of systems that you might have found useful under other circumstances...

(In a concept I've been long developing, this does not actually mean that you'll never get the better agriculture because you went in for the development of hoplite armies, or whatever equivalent example there might be, but that the focus of the civilisation involved gets drawn towards the militaristic aspect of invention...  should a change in research attitude and the society that supports it happen in the future then it may swing back towards the agrarian skillsets, picking up either the original lost tech or some or other era's equivalent stage of such tech, but at the cost of losing knowledge of spear-and-shield warfare to the mists of time, 'rusting' or otherwise becoming pretty much irrelevant.)

Thinking of it, I suspect I've encountered enough examples where, depending on whether one goes for Good or Evil alignment, you get bonus tech of an equivalent association but are excluded from useful items that you might have gotten had you taken a different decision.  (At its most basic, all those choices betwen (say) Nod/GGI or Allies/Axis can be boiled down to this.  Witness the number of times I've played Battlefield 1942 (single-player) and deliberately left a non-vital checkpoint in the opposing AI's hands so I can sneak in and pinch the better type of tank (usually German) that would respawn there, whenever I wish, because the (usually Allied) equivalents just weren't as sexy, even though they were on my side....)

I think I'd want some sorta omidirectional research. I understood why research is generally so overly focus in a 4x, but it never felt right with me, because thats not what happens in rl. Maybe something like preference, grants or something to induce better research in some field.

I'd also like to experiment with more sidewise development. Often time fundamental research doesnt lead to straight forward applications.

But at the same time, as a player, with say SMACX or MoO3, as examples, it can be frustrating to want a key tech and not being able to get it. (I'm aware of MoO3 being shitty, but SMACX and MoO3 have similar approach to research.)

I'd like a first person shooter, but where your arm is almost entirely ragdoll. The only equipment available would be a revolver with a ridiculous kick, but when you managed to shoot something they would be rocked backwards with the force of a shotgun blast to the chest. The enemies would be ragdolls moving forward from a central point in the chest, not even walking but more like floating towards you.  If one should strike another once shot, that one would fall too creating the possibility for domino effects.

Noisy Cricket the game.

A serial killer simulator. Every once in a I want to play someone truly Depraved.

This has tickle me, from a design perspective. Because, its not about the killing, in my point of view. Its the drive to kill, the need to kill, and to kill certain things with criteria. Then there also not getting captured. ANd living a normal day to day life with these pressures...

Its pretty much Dexter the game.

[Biowraith]

How do you make a research tree interesting?

My answer to this is more relating to the space portion, as I'm not so sure on low tech settings, but personally I find it more interesting to be unlocking new weapons, buildings, armour, etc, or modifications to how existing weapons, buildings, armour, etc work.  I find it far less interesting to just be researching +5% attack strength or similar.

So e.g. if I've just researched Laser Cannon technology, I'd much rather future techs in that area be things like adding burst fire, range extension, shield piercing, and so forth, than just researching Laser Cannon II, Laser Cannon III, and maybe +5% to all laser damage.  Ideally there's some kind of tradeoff in using those modifications, whether that be that they're sidegrades with e.g. burst fire having reduced range or accuracy, or just give it an increased cost/weight/whatever, such that you do still have to make a decision about when and where to deploy them (and which ones to deploy).  If you can take a page out of Aurora's book and actually design and research specific weapons based on the tech you've researched that's even better (and expanding on that, e.g. choosing just how much of a burst your burst fire modification is adding - definitely need tradeoffs if you can do that though).

Making a research tree interesting might be a matter of ensuring that pursuing technological expertise in one aspect of the tree precludes another being so well understood.

I like this idea, as in most settings a given civilisation usually has one or more areas that they're specialised in - others may also have that technology, but not nearly as refined and advanced.  Most games tend to just have everyone ends up specialising in everything (because there's not much preventing you from doing so, and you're at a disadvantage if you don't).

My only-just-woke-up thoughts on this would be firstly to have a semi-randomised tech tree a la SoTS2, where techs have a feasibility, with certain basic key techs being 100% while other fancier techs (often enhancing/modifying the key techs) have only a chance of discovery.  Base feasibility should be generally lower than in SoTS2.

Then have sliders that let you choose where to focus research.  Being focused in a given field will a) speed up research in that area, and b) provide a bonus to the feasibility of the non-100% techs in that area.

Changing the area you're focused in should be a long and gradual process.  That way the player has to firstly decide whether they actually want to focus on a particular area, or maybe decide to spread focus across a handful of areas, or just stay entirely balanced.  And secondly if they have been focusing in e.g. military tech, and decide they need to improve their agricultural tech, they've then got to decide whether to spend the time shifting focus first, or just accept that they're unlikely to get much beyond the basic key agricultural techs (and will take a bit longer to get them).