"As for falling behind the tech curve - that will only get worse as time progresses and is a consequence of Game Mechanics, pure and simple. IND and new Affs do not have the tech/industrial base to start from that established Affiliations and their dedicated players have built upon for 10+ years. For a RL comparison: If you start a software company out of your garage and expect to compete with M$ on an even footing, then you are deluding yourself...
Affiliations have become powerhouses because of the multiplication of effort that organizing their playerbases provides."
Could it be argued that once a concept/technology exists, that it should be easier for other factions to research and/or there becomes a stage where a higher level tech becomes the norm? In effect the information filters down?
For example, if you consider the humble Sensor (mkI): are they a device that havn't changed much from the outset that they were conceived, or were they simply a stage in the development of the idea - much refined from the original?
Should at some point - for example if every AFF have Sensor mkII - they be considered standard tech?...If so, would that also imply that the Principle and Tech behind the blueprint also becomes standard tech?
Is it right to assume that the average sentient of the Peripheries stands still in terms of what he/she/it understands?
Should there not be the risk that by trading your high-level tech with other affiliations, that it becomes the new 'standard'?
Then again - should there be levels of standard tech? ie; a new batch of races/affiliatons - in a hitherto unconnected periphery - could be relatively backward/advanced in some aspects?
Assuming that information passes across the Peripheries independently of the actions of Affiliations, should a new periphery with new races/affs be connected then perhaps there would be a period of time where the new ideas pass between the peripheries until they level out?
I can see that the view of long term players could be that this would undermine a lot of research work...but is it right that in say 10 years of game time, that only the Affiliations will have developed?
I would have some principles as e.g. 'Physics' as effectively common knowlege, and be able to develop techs from 'those' at no penalty.
And... since thrust engines can be built without a penalty, why does trying to develop 'Landing engines' blueprint incurr a -7 penalty for not having 'reaction drives' tech... the step up for any new groups without the benefit of 5000 MU research principles, and 1000 MU techs is too high, in my opinion: Letting your average 'Jo blogs PLC' starbase research say, a 'bunks' blueprint at no penalty might give an interest to the starter affs.
And before I get the usual chorus of 'That wouldn't be fair to all those who have invested the effort already' - I did my own copy of the 'bunks' blueprint at a -7 penalty, thanks.
However, as for the 'common' knowledge effect: How about having a copy of a blueprint derived from a technology give a +1 bonus to researching that tech for 'illustrating the technology in application'?
Thus: having 1 each of the blueprints for 'Aux bridge', 'Cargo hold', 'Industrial module MkII' and 'Structural Module MkII' would give a +4 bonus to researching the 'Civil engineering MkII' technology.
Just some ideas... dont shoot me
TonyH
Is the problem that researching the tech for new players is beyond their means or simply getting their hands on it at all is the real crux?
Is it really the case that there is a destinct lack of 'low tech' blueprints on the general market at believable prices?
Is this even a research/tech issue? Is it really a case that new/independents cannot even buy from the open market mkII+ items irrespective of the prices offered?
If this is the case then it looks as though players still have too many stellars despite what they may be saying. Market forces are generally driven by necessity. If there was a maintence cost for blueprints, then selling the redundant ones would become desirable.
Having the EEM selling principles and/or first-order techs at 'cost' price might aid matters I think? Where would that put a principle... Half a million-ish? About the market value of a couple of warships I understand.
If a few simple items, such as landing engines, were able to be researched without penalty, it might provide a research interest for players who wern't so blessed. Maybe compensate for the proliferation in blueprints by having blueprints 'wear out' perhaps?
As it is, I can see examples, in use if not on-sale, of very high mark items, III's and IV's. As things stand at the moment these will always be the 'bling' items of the affiliations which existed at conversion... which in many cases seem to be led by the same players who led at conversion.
When part of a major aff myself, the principles and key techs were held by the PD 'securely' for 'his' projects.
If it is intended this way, so be it... but being at a permanent disadvantage to the entrenched powers will only lead to disillusionment, I'd imagine... Personally I cant even see how I could find a site to set up a colony base big enough to start research on a first-order principle, five years work or not, given all the prime sites are already occupied or at least 'roped off', and prone to being wiped by megafleet one...or two... eight...
TonyH
You CAN buy what you NEED. You may have trouble getting what you WANT. My experience is that a lot of the tech is "nice" but not necessary. You can make a very good go of things with the basic tech available without blue prints (enhanced with BPs you can buy from the open market or special deals). You should DEFINITELY NOT have easy access to principles and underlying tech.
In lots of cases, I would rather make lower MK items so I do not have to acquire the exotic metals needed to make the higher tech stuff.
Goth
| QUOTE (Mica Goldstone @ Sep 21 2005, 03:23 PM) |
| Research, by its very nature is expensive and without huge infrastructure can take a frighteningly long time to daunt any new/independent player. Is the problem that researching the tech for new players is beyond their means or simply getting their hands on it at all is the real crux? Is it really the case that there is a destinct lack of 'low tech' blueprints on the general market at believable prices? Is this even a research/tech issue? Is it really a case that new/independents cannot even buy from the open market mkII+ items irrespective of the prices offered? If this is the case then it looks as though players still have too many stellars despite what they may be saying. Market forces are generally driven by necessity. If there was a maintence cost for blueprints, then selling the redundant ones would become desirable. |
I havn't really played from an independent angle, so can't really say how difficult it is to obtain higher tech equipment without the support of an affiliation.
What the main point of my thread is though, is that if we get to a stage where 95% of ships are flying around with at worst Sensor mkII's does that not in itself make them common knowledge? Does the use/repair/maintenance of items by crews and employees give them insight as to what makes a sensor mkII better than a sensor mkI?...and in turn, does that knowledge then pass onto the public domain?
Are there perhaps private enterprises out there who are actively reverse enginerring higher mark tech available on the markets (or even doing the research themselves) for their own purposes?
| QUOTE (Jumping_Jack @ Sep 21 2005, 02:55 PM) |
| . Personally I cant even see how I could find a site to set up a colony base big enough to start research on a first-order principle, five years work or not, given all the prime sites are already occupied or at least 'roped off', and prone to being wiped by megafleet one...or two... eight... TonyH |
As much as I hate to agree with Tony, I think this part of his statement has merit. Yank is a relatively good example of a location where independents/endangered affiliations can build up.
Maybe having a couple systems where GM run factions ensure peace to a degree would allow independents to be able to build a "safe base" to work from. This way, established affiliations would not be able to just squash anyone who starts building up a bit on their own. To a great degree, this could be done in Yank...but I noticed that it is pretty crowded there. Maybe even have one System like Yank that does not allow any of the established Affiliations to have a base?
Goth
| QUOTE (Goth @ Sep 21 2005, 11:12 AM) |
| Regarding Tech for independent players: You CAN buy what you NEED. You may have trouble getting what you WANT. My experience is that a lot of the tech is "nice" but not necessary. You can make a very good go of things with the basic tech available without blue prints (enhanced with BPs you can buy from the open market or special deals). You should DEFINITELY NOT have easy access to principles and underlying tech. In lots of cases, I would rather make lower MK items so I do not have to acquire the exotic metals needed to make the higher tech stuff. Goth |
I would agree with Goth's quotes about giving free tech to INDependant players... In my recent experience of the game this has been an unmitigated disaster
. I dont even argue that piffling small micro-affs like me should get 'free' stuff, as much of the common stuff is available through trade or exchange... like I'm being petitioned to do at the moment actually.What I do find hard to accept is the argument that tech is nice but not necessary - does goth Really not make use of mkII heavy hulls?... Warship ship sizes larger than 75 hulls? Scintillators? Bunks? Battle Bridges? Any warfleet which is based around a 75-hull broadsword warship is at an immediate disadvantage against the 100-huller, since both need the same quantities of Bridges, Jump engines, Sensors, targetting computers... but the larger hull size can match them with more firepower.
Lets face it... the Phrase "You can make a very good go of things with the basic tech available" is just so much... 'Goth' from somebody who uses it extensively.... Unless.... this could be easier than I thought
Tonyh
Perhaps. But you could also say that this encompasses basic items like ship hulls, jump and ISR drives etc. which cannot be built with our human 21th-century technology. Having these technologies available is what raises you above being classified as "native" (-->Naplian
). You are given these for free when you become an affiliation.There is a very small market for BPs as of yet simply because affiliations have always, and will always, consider their technological superiority a key element to maintaining their own power and survival. However, among friendly affiliations, technology trade is quite common, at least on common stuff like bunks. I cannot see any chance for an open market for tech and BPs ever, although as a player I would like there to be.
Should the EEM provide tech for a price low enough for small affs to buy it?
Hardly at all, and certainly only for widely known common items and not for secret/special tech. The price is almost impossible to calculate. If it's too low then it will piss off the established players because their technology gains are devaluated and newcomers can catch up (too) easily. If it's too expensive then the small aff cannot afford it, and may be cheaper off to research it themselves.
Finally, the points raised here should be alleviated by the Infrastructure upgrade. Last I heard it was planned that planetary populations had principles and techs of their own and local starbases would be able to tap into these resources, perhaps at a price. A small affiliation based on a heavily populated high-tech world might thus be in a position to gain quite high-tech items. The downside might be that the population is unimpressed with most trade goods (=bad trade profits) and your popularity might also play a pivotal role in the availability of ingenious technology.
| QUOTE (Frabby @ Sep 21 2005, 01:08 PM) |
| You are given these for free when you become an affiliation. |
Nothing is 'given' free when you become an affiliation. Players who are part of an aff, or IND players who are in non, can all build the basic stuff. Even the Naplians - I am not aware of any races without the 'basic' Phoenix technologies, are there any?... apart from that race without Mets in...
The next step up requires a blueprint, which is... two? weeks effort for an aff with the underlying tech, or a four or five months for players without. Trust me on that figure.
| QUOTE |
| However, among friendly affiliations, technology trade is quite common, at least on common stuff like bunks. I cannot see any chance for an open market for tech and BPs ever, although as a player I would like there to be. |
This makes the problem worse - entire 'meta affs' now have the precisely the same technologies and blueprints, wheras any newstarts are frozen out... last time I asked the 'consortium' were capped at 5 'affs'... but what now differentiates the SMS from the RIP, apart from a three-letter code?
| QUOTE |
| Finally, the points raised here should be alleviated by the Infrastructure upgrade. |
Is THAT not in yet? My ***, it was the 'next big step' two years ago now.... must have been displaced by something that needed fixing urgently about torpedoes, again, I guess :-)
TonyH
| QUOTE (Jumping_Jack @ Sep 21 2005, 08:01 PM) |
| but what now differentiates the SMS from the RIP, apart from a three-letter code? |
Do you really want an answer to that?
As to your comments on standard tech your way off base if you think every affiliation or 'meta-affiliation' has mk III or II as standard, I'm sure the bigger ones but i doubt the majority of the smaller ones. And that is as it should be.
| QUOTE (ptb @ Sep 21 2005, 04:07 PM) |
| Do you really want an answer to that? |
Errr... Yes? I know the RIP wander around acting tough with anything weaker than themselves, and running away from anything stonger... could be any one of half-a-dozen affiliations, really. What are they FOR, apart from to be yet another PD of?
| QUOTE |
As to your comments on standard tech your way off base if you think every affiliation or 'meta-affiliation' has mk III or II as standard, I'm sure the bigger ones but i doubt the majority of the smaller ones. And that is as it should be. |
No, but I'm willing to bet you've got a virtually identical range of technologies as the SMS, as a result of melding of your pool of available technologies into a unified whole. I think the only unique aspect to the RIP at the moment, is their access to Sargasso perhaps? Should have given that up when they ceased to be pirates of course...
...and there are ony about 4-5 'meta affs' in the game, with I should think a pretty similar range of techs between them. The smallest would have less, of course.
TonyH
| QUOTE (Jumping_Jack @ Sep 21 2005, 10:44 PM) |
| No, but I'm willing to bet you've got a virtually identical range of technologies as the SMS. |
I wish we had anything like their range of techs
I'm willing to agree that alot of affiliations lost their uniqueness, but i'd say thats more to do with everything being standarisded at conversion and the general progression of phoenix towards being a wargame.
As to the main issue about technology most affs probably have bunks/landing engines/comabt engines, but after than i'm sure the 'standard techs' your talking about aren't standard at all. Of couse only Mica/David really know for sure.
| QUOTE (ptb @ Sep 22 2005, 07:43 AM) |
| I'm willing to agree that alot of affiliations lost their uniqueness, but i'd say thats more to do with everything being standarisded at conversion and the general progression of phoenix towards being a wargame. |
This comment holds a lot of concern for me.
From a designers point of view, you have to sort out the things that will wreck a game before you can add things that will improve a game. It is also the nature of players to seek tactical advantages, again pushing the combat parametres to their limits. It is however important to point out that each set of changes have been much smaller than the previous ones, i.e. we are getting things right.
The knock-on effect has been to constantly delay the features that we have really wanted to implement, these being custom orders and the infrastructure. Infrastructure and custom orders still represent a year's worth of coding under the belt despite the need to return time and again to the battle program!
The game was never meant to be just a wargame, this said, for every ten requests for new technology, eight are for some new super-duper weapon and one is for a super-duper defence.... Nor were all affiliations meant to be the same, we have not, until now been a position where we could really push new areas of the game. This is something that will improve.
| QUOTE (Mica Goldstone @ Sep 22 2005, 09:31 AM) |
| The game was never meant to be just a wargame, this said, for every ten requests for new technology, eight are for some new super-duper weapon and one is for a super-duper defence.... Nor were all affiliations meant to be the same, we have not, until now been a position where we could really push new areas of the game. This is something that will improve. |
Well you have to admit thinking up a way to turn something you find into a weapon is a lot easier than seeing how it could be used for defence.
Obivously this will change when we can see how to affect planets with the new infrastructure stuff, i've had more than one special action you've told me to try again when the new stuff is in.
My main point was just that removing the unique points of affilations ment that it's more how players play it than how the game is coded, which is as it should be, however this will mean a lot of affs will look similar for a while unless they have particually strong players.
| QUOTE (ptb @ Sep 22 2005, 07:47 PM) |
| Well you have to admit thinking up a way to turn something you find into a weapon is a lot easier than seeing how it could be used for defence. |
I disagree. Turning new things into FOOD is much more fun.
I think the tendancy to create new weapons is simply a reaction to being at war, or planning to be at war in the future. And I can see why any aff that is 'stuck' in war may be inclined to see this as a war-game, but I certainly do not.
Personally, I do not like the "technology" part of the game. Partly because to me its boring, but also because the large groups do have so much power and alot of it was brought over from the bse game....i understand. It would be like me playing monopoly in england, moving to america and taking my monopoly money with me. Its like the 16 year old tiwan little league player who was pretending he was twelve. Heres what happens. The new players are under alot of pressure due to having to deal with the big guys. That can be fun, but then you have to play pirate or somthing in order to deal with them.
They get thier fun at the expense of people who haven't been in the game as long. Maybe they have some god given right to everything they've earned, but not to the changing of game mechanics or to having built in skills (such as in operatives) turns outcomes, being based on stellars, not game playing ability. It is a game.
There are people in the game willing to trade technology - certainly enough to get a first step on the ladder. Technology is (deliberately) a long hard slog and it also follows the laws of diminishing returns...the increase in capability is not huge, you get to produce half what you did before of the level below and use more exotic ores to build them.
Tech is just the same as every other aspect of the game - you can't hope to stand toe-to-toe with an affiliation as a solo player. Not in war, not in cargo capacity, not in just about any aspect - and nor should you expect to be able to, should you? But it is possible to find a successful niche in the game as a solo player, you do find affs willing to trade with the solo players, and many of us will quite often be more generous with people who we consider to be genuinely trying to make a go of it on their own
Dan
99% of this is off market as you do not want tech falling into the wrong hands.
Andy
The question is, does this and should this be applied in game?
| QUOTE (Sleeps With Dragons @ Oct 17 2005, 12:17 PM) |
| The question is, does this and should this be applied in game? |
Isnt it all ready applied in the game though - by research being copied and distributed. In-game, the Japanese would have gotten so good so quick because they got their hands on copies of the tech. Same with PCs - in-game it would mean someone has reached Mk 3 PCs and so can sell off their "low tech" Mk 2s to others, so the tech spreads.
| QUOTE (Watcher @ Oct 17 2005, 06:17 PM) | ||
Isnt it all ready applied in the game though - by research being copied and distributed. In-game, the Japanese would have gotten so good so quick because they got their hands on copies of the tech. Same with PCs - in-game it would mean someone has reached Mk 3 PCs and so can sell off their "low tech" Mk 2s to others, so the tech spreads. |
Well this is the awkward bit - you can trade blueprints, but that doesn't neccessarily mean you understand the Techniques and underlying principles behind the blueprint.
...and in order to improve on the model from the blueprint you traded for you will likely need the background knowledge (Techniques and Principles) unless you have the research capacity to work at a massive penalty. Which kind of implies that a new affiliation which, for example decided to focus totally on AI, would likely never become a market leader in the field no matter how much they focussed on achieving that goal
| QUOTE (Duckworth-Lewis @ Oct 17 2005, 10:33 PM) |
| Well this is the awkward bit - you can trade blueprints, but that doesn't neccessarily mean you understand the Techniques and underlying principles behind the blueprint. |
you can trade techs and principles as well - we have done so, and I'm sure there are others that have as well
Dan
The larger Affs need to pay for their huge research bills somehow. I for one would be happy to use a small amount of my research to make and sell BPs (or even tech) to others. And those smaller techs cant really stand there and say they cant afford it. Hell, they dont have the cost of doing research! And yes we will deliver if you are unable to visit Imperial space.
SMS Whitegold
| QUOTE (StellarMining @ Oct 24 2005, 08:10 PM) |
| If smaller Affs, IND whoever wants certain tech then bloody well put it on your markets as a buy item. That is what the markets are for. Just remember that making a BP costs about 18-20k (I say about), so dont offer to buy a BP for 15k, you wont get any takers. |
You say that but then I just picked up 9 bps for 15k each on the public market
Although granted no affilation is going to start research for you for that little, doesn't cover costs.