Talk:Science upgrades/@comment-173.28.63.240-20151010053358

Okay, I'm not sure how to go about adding pages to the wikia, and I don't remember that much HTML from when I was in college, so I'm just going to add this as a comment here until my next day off to properly play around with adding a page.

Although I do like most of the suggestion this person has listed (especially as Force is WAY over represented in the techs, and rather easy to keep high enough after a couple of unfolds) I think there should be an additional special tier of research. This tier wouldn't be focused on boosting core stats, instead it would be focused on minimizing the decay penalties. It would be an extremely high cost area to unlock and each tech in it would also have horribly high costs to develop, and start with rather high refinement values as well. It would be seperate techs for Force Decay, Trade Decay, and Culture Decay. Although I could probably live without the other two in my current universe I have 25 Included systems and less than 1% of my culture is reaching the next system that will become Included. Just trying to get that system included my Footprint has become nearly 50% larger than my Land, and it's almost to the point where it isn't practical to keep trying to expand my empire as even once I do the special investments that I can earn the money for (Ringworlds are still being way to expensive to go after) once it is included my Footprint is still going to be 4-5K larger than my Land.

Also, I think it could be rather helpful for this special extra tier to have a 'Core Systems' tech. The effect of the tech would be that for every level researched one system goes from being an Included system to a Core system. The primary difference between Included and Core systems is that Core systems essentially act as new 'projection' points for the Force, Trade, and Culture heading out to other systems. This would essentially decrease the distance the Force, Trade, and Culture would need to travel to reach other systems, making it much easier to keep Including new systems and keep expanding. Obviously this tech would need a very high base development cost and initial refinement cost. I think that there should also be an Identity requirement added in to be able to turn systems into Core Systems, something like 10x, or maybe even 100x as much Identity reaching the system (following the Culture decay rate) as the system has inherent Culture, and that the correct Core value for the next system (based on distance, as occasionally you'll discover one that is closer than others you've already discovered) should be shown in the Tech's description. The reason for the secondary requirement would be to emulate the fact that you have subsumed their culture to the point that they now primarily identify with the players culture rather than their native culture. The secondary benefit of this 'Core Systems' tech would be that once a system becomes a Core System its status can never be downgraded (I have lost systems from being too aggressive on Truth Investments and loosing too much culture from the Wealth penalties).

Finally, I do have a modifying thought on the proposed Truth boosting tech. Instead of it costing a permament resource (such as Land) it should require a certain minimum value for each successive level of the tech (I'm still in favor of it being Land in this instance), so that you're empire has to be of a certain minimum effective size to be able to develop and keep researching the tech. My suggestion for the initial development is either 100Gha Land or else 1KGha Land. Either value would require a certain minimum empire size, and with increasing values from there (though not the same pattern as tech research costs, that'd almost be too limiting, maybe around half of it) it would require the empire keep expanding to keep boosting it, rather than the player just spend a few days letting values build up.