Make the research more intuitive.



For example:

Arid Epigenetics: Change to "Colonize Arid", and put Epigenetics in the decscription somewhere.



Another example:

Advanced Machining

unlocks Ion Torpedoes and High Isotope Plating.



I am a gamer, I can guess that torps are some sort of missiles, and plating is armor. But give a *tiny* bit more detail. Make it easy for MOO people to pick it up. I am not super familiar with combat, but if I saw "Ion Torpedoes: lvl 1 missile" or "High Isotope Plating: lvl 1 armor" it would give me a better framework when I look at other parts of the tech tree.



Whatever is unlocked, give a very very brief statement of game effect. I want to have a good idea what this does, before I ever see it in play.

And instead of making the tree go in 4 different directions... It might be easier if you had four mini-trees stacked vertically, going left to right with a general header in front of them. Or ignore this

YMMV, but I like the flavor names. If all the techs were just called "missile level 1", "missile level 2" it would be pretty boring. You can see by the position in the tech tree, and the stats, how the power compares from one tech to another. For most of the techs, you can also tell what families are affected by the tech, such as the missile icon, the engine icon, and so forth.

The tree, while pretty, is not as functional as just listing the techs you can currently research. Moo2 with its simple vertical listing, while not as elegant, was much more functional.

I don't know, personally I think the research tree has a lot of descriptions in the form of its icons.

For example, you mention "Missile level 1" and "Missile level 2" in the description, but if you look at the icons, that very information is already there. For example, if you compare the icons for Unstable Torpedos and Fusion Torpedos, you'll notice that the icon for the unstable torpedos is only half way filled up while the Fusion Torpedo is 3/4th filled. So there is your tech level.



There's a lot more of information hidden in the icons though, they're color coded for their purpose as well as shape coded for their place and type. For example a red mark on the icon tells me it's a military tech. The shape of the icon tells me whether it's a ship tech (square) a colony tech (triangle) or an empire-wide improvement (star). And once again, that's all the information right there in the icons. And if you need further information, just point at the icon and it'll tell you some fluff about the weapon and what it does from a lore point of view. I could understand the suggestion if it were more like in MOO where weapons sometimes come with special properties but in ES it's really only Rock, Paper, Scissors without any surprises attached.

Part of the reason I enjoy these types of games is getting lost in the game play, and removing that wonderful flavor text would ruin part of the illusion. If you find it disruptive to your play, why not mod it out for your own game?

Definitely don't change it. I enjoy reading the descriptions.

Moved to the proposals section.