Hi All,



Here is my idea. If at some distant point in the future when you devs have the higher priority issues worked out, you could allow techs to be mutually exclusive. If you research Tech-A then you can no longer research Tech-B.



My mini-vision for this would be to allow factions to 'evolve' along different paths. For example, you could have a tech line that allows a race to integrate more and more with technology, OR INSTEAD to develop it's own organic abilities. The tech race could evolve into cyborgs and eventually upload their personalities into fully-robotic platforms, whereas the organics could use DNA enhancements to give themselves greater abilities such as Psionics (use the force, Luke!).



Currently, for any given faction, you can have it all if you just research it all. But this would give us a semi-momentous decision. You might then use this to a lesser extent with weapon/defense types, at least for the baddest-of-the-bad weapon/defense, to force some specialization.



To expand this idea to "Conditional Technology", you could perhaps have technologies that only unlock (make it researchABLE, not researchED) when/if you have a particular resource (but not a traditional resource) in your empire. Like a technology that becomes available if you discover a certain type of Temple of the Endless on a moon somewhere, and allows you to build similar (but less powerful) temples elsewhere. Or a disease that you can research and weaponize and use against your enemies if you have a planet with Kessler Syndrome or some other anomaly. Distribution of such a plague (with no espionage system) might be tricky, but maybe you could make it a system improvement that once built on a planet spreads the effects of this disease to enemy planets within your influence range.



In fact, if you simply added a 'excluded_by' variable to each tech that points to another tech which disallows this tech, then I'm sure modders would run with it. Or a 'requires' variable which is hardcoded to require a temple, anomaly, or wonder.



Anyway, just some ideas.



Eiger

E.g. hooks in the code which allow mutually exclusive technologies and prerequisites which are not just other technologies?



That doesn't sound like such a bad idea - it certainly allows more flexibility in modding.