IceGremlin wrote:

I stand by my previous statements that regarding Military Quadrant overcrowding, White quality weapon and defense modules should become Stage Unlocks like in Endless Legend. I can see twelve slots on that screen which would be emptied if you did that, eight of which are on overcrowded techs. 

If you did the same with basic Squadrons, but perhaps not Advanced Squadrons, you'd have a lot of space to,  move in all of the more interesting Military techs scattered in other quadrants.

This does make some sense.

I stand by my previous statements that regarding Military Quadrant overcrowding, White quality weapon and defense modules should become Stage Unlocks like in Endless Legend. I can see twelve slots on that screen which would be emptied if you did that, eight of which are on overcrowded techs. 

If you did the same with basic Squadrons, but perhaps not Advanced Squadrons, you'd have a lot of space to,  move in all of the more interesting Military techs scattered in other quadrants.

Kynrael wrote: I can understand your apprehension about having them in Curiosities. To be completely open, we're not big fans of something that useful being there, but the Military Quadrant is getting overloaded. However, we are brainstorming other module acquisition possibilities that would be without the random of curiosities! Might not come right away, but we'll be definitely moving that kind of modules there.

What about you have them unlock from Pirate Lair loot ?

Higher level lairs having higher chances of dropping them maybe?

Interesting, and graphicly it's really impressive ! 

we are brainstorming other module acquisition possibilities that would be without the random of curiosities! Might not come right away, but we'll be definitely moving that kind of modules there.

I cant brainstorm with you, but what about a new place in the market, where you can buy unique weapons for a lot of dust, and things you can find in curiosity usually ? Dust would get a technologic impact, i would love something like that.

@Aitarus

Only "vanilla" modules for the Swarm Missiles and Railguns, yes!

I can understand your apprehension about having them in Curiosities. To be completely open, we're not big fans of something that useful being there, but the Military Quadrant is getting overloaded. However, we are brainstorming other module acquisition possibilities that would be without the random of curiosities! Might not come right away, but we'll be definitely moving that kind of modules there. In the meantime, we believe that the modules will be a useful addition but not OP game changers that you cannot counter with standard modules.

Thing is with FX color is that we make sure it's as close as possible to strategic use for direct feedback. The energy squadrons have a light blue tinge to make them more energetic looking, but it's not "Titanium Blue" :)

I know that moving around the techs could be seen as a problem, especially for the MP crowd. I'll be waiting to see what they have to say about that!

@Slashman

That's a very good point! I'll see that the Standard Missiles are targeted first to avoid that kind of effect so it doesn't become the only meta possible.

We'll be adressing the fighter ineffectiveness against bombers, but maybe not for the Free Weekend Reward update. It's a bit more complex than it looks (well, behaviour systems are always complex) and we need to make sure exactly what's not working (I did compile a lot of great feedback from the community so we should be able to sort this out!)

Yes, Railguns come as a new way to boost Short tactics. Battle balancing is an endless process (joke intended) and we'll probably be rebalancing other weapons etc...

We hope we don't disappoint! :D

If Swarm missiles behave the way I think they should, then their ideal use should be to mix them with standard missiles to try to overwhelm FLAK so some of your big missiles get through. Just a caution to make sure that they don't do TOO much damage so people simply pick them instead of regular missiles. Overall though, I like the idea and the visuals.

Energy squadrons are a good idea. No problem with the concept, just hoping that the fighter ineffectiveness versus bombers is addressed as well.

Railguns I'm kind of on the fence about. I would have thought that they would be more long range. But I can see where the value of having them totally decimate at short range would encourage more close range choices. They will need to be backed up by proper tactics cards though.

I like the concept of the modules presented here. I just hope there are no hitches when they get implemented. Crossing my fingers!

Let's keep this civil, please. :)

As some have pointed out - the strategics will stay mutually exclusive: they are interesting things to unlock and bring specialization. Basic weapons are less interesting to be honest; it's quite lackluster to just "level up" simple techs. We'd rather have the room for new and interesting modules that play out differently and fill a niche.

And we do not want exclusivity between basic modules - otherwise, wars would be very set in stone as to how they play out.

We're not moving Defense techs for now, and we will avoid having exclusivity links for left side techs too - we had that quite a long time ago and instead of feeling like it gave interesting choice, it was experience more as something that was constraining and not very interesting.

To finish, I present you the work in progress Military quadrant (a few things to polish out but this is probably how the content will be distributed ; please send your feedback ! :D ) :

If we are only talking the basic lasers, beams, slugs and missiles along with basic shields and armor, I can't see what the issue is. White weapons are supposed to be the weapons you DON'T want to use but have to when you have no alternatives. Strategic weapons would still have exclusive choices along each tier where choosing one means locking out the other. I think that's pretty fair and may even help the AI along by simplifying the military tree somewhat.

Dragar wrote:

Naskoni wrote:

If you look at the screenshot at the first page - if the decision means that all weapon techs to the left of the "center line" going through the military quadrant will now magically unlock as soon as you reach the corresponding tier then I'd be absolutely against said decision. Streamlining what I consider to be the "meat" of the military quadrant to be unlocked, en-masse, the moment you reach a research tier doesn't make sense to me, not the least because, as pointed out, it eliminates any possibility to have mutually exclusive tech.

It eliminates the possibility to have mutually exclusive tech? 

I could understand this if such a thing were on the cards, but it doesn't seem to be. If it were on the cards, I'm sure there could be a redesign. 

There could be a redesign? What do you call butchering half the military quadrant then?

Dragar wrote:

Naskoni wrote:

Not sure I'm that happy with the decision for the exact reason that that would practically eliminate any sensible mutually exclusive techs as currently seen on the tree, i.e. upon reaching a military quadrant tier you'd get ALL projectile and energy weapons (currently you have to make a permanent choice between some) without even having to research them.

I think you've misunderstood the decision. Only white weapons - which are currently *not* mutually exclusive - will be unlocked by military tier. The choices between strategic resource weapons remain.

If you look at the screenshot at the first page - if the decision means that all weapon techs to the left of the "center line" going through the military quadrant will now magically unlock as soon as you reach the corresponding tier then I'd be absolutely against said decision. Streamlining what I consider to be the "meat" of the military quadrant to be unlocked, en-masse, the moment you reach a research tier doesn't make sense to me, not the least because, as pointed out, it eliminates any possibility to have mutually exclusive tech. And you cannot see what I mean, as explained in my examples, currently as obviously we don't have neither swarms nor rails as to be able to choose between them and their direct competitors in the projectile branch - the slugs and the "conventional" missles.

I mean if we extend such an approach we might as well streamline the defensive techs, armor and shields, directly into the tiers as well. Or even further - for example why bother researching the colonisation tech for so many different planetary types intead of simply bundling them into tier 1, 2 and 3 planets and have them available upon reaching the corresponding tiers. It wouldn't even matter what it is that you researched previously, as long as you researched a certain number of techs in a given tier. Not very differently from "hey, we researched better bunkers for our ground forces and civilian population, but as we reached that tier's treshold we also magically obtained the tech to now develop slugs, railguns, missles, swarm-missles, better armor and better shields for our SPACE ships. Gee, that bunker research sure did pay off!" Makes no sense to me. Can't even believe that ADDING more weapon modules to the game would lead to such drastic oversimplification of the research tree. If that's the plan I'd go as far as prefering to have those modules NOT added if adding them would mean gutting the research tree to be able to accomodate them... especially when we could simply attach them to the already existing techs for both slugs and missles and have them unlock together, without changing anything at all.

Dragar wrote:

Naskoni wrote:

Not sure I'm that happy with the decision for the exact reason that that would practically eliminate any sensible mutually exclusive techs as currently seen on the tree, i.e. upon reaching a military quadrant tier you'd get ALL projectile and energy weapons (currently you have to make a permanent choice between some) without even having to research them.

I think you've misunderstood the decision. Only white weapons - which are currently *not* mutually exclusive - will be unlocked by military tier. The choices between strategic resource weapons remain.

Yes I believe this is what will happen. And I think the military tech tree will be leaner and meaner for it.

Also a big thanks to Kynrael and Amplitude for their swift responses and acknowledgement of player feedback. I'm excited to see this go into play!

Naskoni wrote:

Not sure I'm that happy with the decision for the exact reason that that would practically eliminate any sensible mutually exclusive techs as currently seen on the tree, i.e. upon reaching a military quadrant tier you'd get ALL projectile and energy weapons (currently you have to make a permanent choice between some) without even having to research them.

I think you've misunderstood the decision. Only white weapons - which are currently *not* mutually exclusive - will be unlocked by military tier. The choices between strategic resource weapons remain.

Hot damn! I've never gone from suggestion to implementation in this short a time frame. How exciting. However, I think that in light of Strategic cost Defenses existing, and generally being superior to non-strategic Defenses as Plutar and Gzar have noted, it would be better to make basic Defenses stage unlocks as well.

As to Naskoni's critique that this will reduce the decision making of Military technology, the technologies which will now become Stage unlocks (White quality weapons) were never mutually exclusive in the first place, and I daresay they didn't represent very interesting choices anyways. There will, presumably, still be the mutually exclusive Strategic weapons, though I believe even those should only be separate and not exclusive, while true mutual exclusivity should be reserved for Tactics.

Whatever the case I think this will make much more room for us to make actually interesting decisions in our Military, and not waste our mental processes "choosing" to develop baseline armaments in our fleets.

Does vanilla weapons mean, the basic white version? Because that way we would still keep the resource versions mutually exclusive, which would be enough of a choice maybe.