This may create a lot of redundancies to multi-quote and split up every comment but I didn't get a chance this morning to address some things in your second reply so it's necessary for me to do this here... I'll try to lump topics at least.
It needs a better name, like "Urban Culture". This could cover other areas if we do this. So like
Urban Culture
Req Tech: Counterculture AND Forensics AND Modern Sports
I agree the name needs improved and I was thinking similarly but I'd prefer Urban Gangs at least as it really denotes the tech to be a Crime tech as it's intended.
Is the Mass Driver still require this tech through other techs? Cause the Mass Driver is like a GIANT railgun.
I figured that was what Mass Driver was and yes, along this course it maintains a prereq of Railgun.
Guess Laser Battery (Fusion) building will need to be moved here. Note that it replaces the Railgun Battery (Raillgun). That is going to be a very short time between. In fact will it then create a situation where you can research Weaponized Lasers before Railguns?
Good catch. We have a few options here to solve this. I would propose:
1) Make them run concurrent. If you look at our current tech progress in RL we're currently making rapid progress on both and we do actually have some weaponized laser systems in use now. They are mostly in use as missile interception weaponry but can be used to great effect against other air forces as well.
2) Therefore the Railgun (being a Heavy Railgun - fires very heavy and hugely impacting shots but takes a bit to cool off between uses to do so safely so does not fire at a rate much greater than our current artillery batteries) Battery would be an anti-ground unit building while...
3) The Laser Battery would have a much lesser (but compounding) effect on ground units (and would increase the minimum defense for entry since it would have a lethal effect on those units that approach closely) but would also contain some enhancement to interception (if a new tag is needed for this I'll be happy to oblige as part of the project.)
4) The Laser Battery as you've probably got it currently envisioned (as a suitable replacement for the Railgun battery) would probably be best encompassed as an Ion Battery building.
5) Rapid Railgun Batteries would also open up at Microgenerators and I don't see it really obsoleting or being an upgrade of any of the above so perhaps should also run concurrent and allow cities to really grow strong in their defenses.
We'll have to further evaluate these particular buildings very soon I think. For now, the most appropriate action would be to keep Railgun Battery at Railguns and rename the Laser Battery to Ion Battery and move it to Ion Weaponry to give them enough time between making Ion Batteries the upgrade that replaces the Railgun Battery.
I thin this will break the Nanosatelite Constilition. It will need to be moved to somewhere around x107. Maye there could be some sort of "Cloaking" tech that makes something complete invisible to other spectrum. Also the Peace Maker and YAM nukes will need to be moved too. Note sure about the Special Infantry.
Yeah this was a hotspot I may have overlooked trying to patch up at the time I was working on this. However...
I did come to realize that there's really two degrees of Invisibility development we're talking about here. One (the one we nearly have) is based on new materials that bend light as it hits the object and other optical tricks. It makes for an invisibility that is not absolute and total. Invisible objects and people can be spotted as there are slight disturbances that allow detection for the truly alert to catch onto.
The second phase, the one I think was reflected in the original Invisibility tech placement, would be photonic field manipulation. I'd been thinking of including photon shields anyhow. They would absolutely bend light around the object or person in a radius around the object. This would be an absolute defense against laser weaponry as well and I've got an interesting concept coming together about shielding that should make the late game quite intriguing strategically (having to decide what kind of shielding to use on your units as they can't overlap
) and a need for a perfect defense against lasers and strong defense against Ion beams had emerged as a gap in that scheme. So I was thinking about putting such a tech in anyhow.
Calling this technology Cloaking would actually fit quite well there as my layout doesn't have ships with the built-in ability until Droid ships and the current invisibility tech lies between Shockwave and Droid ships. This will enable me to generate some cool interactions with equipment for upgrading Shockwave ships and will enable the Droid ships nicely. Since the photon shielding would BE cloaking then I don't have to struggle to try to make all Droid ships have it (just enforce that those that do ALSO have Photon rather than other forms of shielding.)
So yeah, perfect. Simply rename the current invis tech to be Cloaking really makes a perfect fit.
I'll work in Photon Shields around that as well then.
As for the Special Infantry, I suspect there will be a lot of eventual repositioning of land units with similar evaluations to come so I'm not going to stress on that at the moment. I suppose we can leave it at Cloaking for now.
Hydro said:
I said:
New Tech: Electric Arc Weaponry (x99/y11) Prereq: Fusion. Becomes additional Prereq for Shockwave Engine and Wireless Electricity. Is prereq for any EMP or Electric Weapon System (promos and units)
Um ok.
I needed to shift the weaponry forward a bit on the tree so as to allow the ships to bundle a little closer together and not start intruding too closely to the Droid ships. There also appeared to be some other benefits. Wireless Electricity's definition takes a little more refinement in doing this as it becomes a bit of a derivative of the research that takes place here where we weaponize electricity enough to control it to create huge non-nuclear bursts and arc beams directed as we will. Wireless Electricity then becomes the advancement of this (like nuclear power was for fusion) research that allows us to now transfer electrical energy from distant sources to receiving devices that even foot soldiers can receive and now enables the wielding, by hand, of very powerful weaponry that used to require entire reactors to power (in particular, the thinking has extended to Handheld (rapid) Railguns as well as handheld electrical weaponry at this point.)
Hope that clarifies my thinking a bit.
Why Lunar Manufacturing and Mass Driver? Maybe I am confused on what this is.
1) Lunar Manufacturing becomes a major inspiration for the scientists to start considering better ways to transport objects than the mechanical methods we have so far. It becomes a study platform as initially use on Earth is considered a bit dangerous to the very integrity of the planet tectonics.
2) Adaptation of Mass Driver technologies actually lead directly to what enables our command of sound to this extent. I theorize that it's found that by running a Mass Driver 'dry' it creates such a soundwave that it can forcefully push objects about. Adaptations to miniaturize and then further adaptations to shape these sound waves enables the final tech discovery of Sonic Telekinetics, the application of which unlocks Sonic Shielding and Sonic Blast weaponry.
Note: the theories surrounding this technology are already well proven in RL. Generating controlled sound waves in such volume and shaping it with ease is what we lack. Therefore it surely wouldn't be too far off from where we are now when we can work with the technology with this degree of effectiveness.
Why would Geneticlly altered food be a requirement for a Fusion Engine? You pulling a BTTF Mr. Fusion here?
A great deal of energy is necessary to build up to the capacity to safely contain such a smallscale fusion reaction. An element of the engine design allows us to (as in Back to the Future) use castoff biological material to fuel the building energies necessary to push to the point where the reaction may be maintained. Additionally, breaking them down into the materials needed to generate the reaction takes place inside the engine as well (some very advanced biological chemistry enables us to rebond all the materials, even at a submolecular level, into fusionable fuel thus obsoleting the need for tricky uranium handling.) This mechanism would have been further explored and developed at the stage of Enhanced Consumables so it's the advancements in chemistry and physics that are taking place there that eventually enable the invention and application of the Shockwave engine, both for personal and military application.
And people love it because it's very clean - and advanced work with Fusion at this point has made it quite safe as we can kill the switch VERY quickly and will default to a rapid shutdown if suffering intense and sudden damage. Thus finally it's actually safe to use as a vehicular energy source.
How is this different from Shielding (x112) tech?
Shielding represents something more advanced. Electromagnetic Shielding would be a repellent and a deflecting field but can be penetrated while Shielding is far more solid. In a sense, Shielding represents 'advanced shielding' while 'advanced shielding' a magnitude of power beyond that. I would think of an Electromagnetic Shield as a single repelling field and Shielding as an actual force field - a Pair of extremely HIGH powered Electromagnetic Shields sandwiching a layer of air with such compression that it becomes solid thus enabling a far more material deflection and protection.
I may yet split the Energy Shield CC into 3 entirely different categories to represent all three of these stages but initially I've been thinking that I'd keep them all as 'Energy Shields' and simply upgrade them via stages of equipment eventually.
Gamewise, Shielding comes far toooooo late for Combat Class plans and far too close to Advanced Shielding to enable gradiated progression among unit upgrade paths. Putting Electromagnetic Shielding where proposed will enable greater granularity to show up in unit upgrade chains and equipment development.
Sounds good. So like Laser Infantry etc.
Yes... placing it a bit later than building and large vehicular applications of laser weapons that take a lot of energy and size such that effective handheld lasers need a bit more development to make truly useful in comparison to other concurrent weapons available to ground soldiers. At Wireless Electricity and Exoskeletal Armor you almost have it (and it's already been applied to large Mechs much earlier) but a little work to greatly enhance the handheld laser makes it finally a truly lethal handheld weapon.
I said:
New Tech: Ion Beam Weaponry (x105/y15) Prereqs: Superstrong Alloys, Amplified Wavelengths, Photon Thermodynamics, and War Machines. Becomes primary prerq of Electromagnetic Voltage. Is the main prerequisite for any units/promos that have an Ion Weapon
Um ok.
To clarify, an Ion Beam is basically what is created when you turn on a particle accelerator. Miniaturized so that it doesn't require miles of tubing (though still requiring a unit of fairly large size so is only ever Large Vehicular or Building based) and weaponized, these throw streams of super accelerated molecules (what type matters little here as the speed makes such physics almost irrelevant) at the enemy and thus become something like a laser but a bit more 'physical' and far more penetrating and powerful. Just requires a LOT of energy.
The result is a cutting beam that has the power shown by Cyclops in the Wolverine: X-Men origins movie.
I know there are later beam techs (much later) such as Disintegration and Anti-Matter but these are different. Disintigration is a field disruption ray that causes matter to break down to the sub-molecular level and scatter. Anti-Matter Beams basically completely eradicate matter by completely negating its existence. They're almost entirely equivalent in strength and capacity but differ in ranges of shaping these forces in weaponized contexts and how the shield types interact with them. Ion Beams, however, are very one-trick ponies with an unparallelled capacity to puncture.
The main weakness of an Ion Beam is that it CAN be deflected (or defracted) by some materials and electromagnetic forces at the right angles and an opposing beam targeted just right CAN counter the majority of the stream for a moment until both stream sources are destroyed by what particles can sneak through the oncoming particles. For its induction, it's an absolutely devastating weapon. It takes some further time and development to miniaturize it enough to be on anything BUT a massive Shockwave Battleship. (Keeping with the Biggest, Baddest, Newest philosophy of Battleship roles on these charts.)
How about instead of renaming Aviation you rename Naval Aviation to "Naval Flight"? And then rename "Advanced Flight" to "Advanced Aviation"? Thus like ...
- Flight
- Naval Flight
- Aviation
- Advanced Aviation
Works for me. Or simply rename Naval Aviation to Naval Flight and keep Advanced Aviation as the moniker seems to work for me.
So its more about keeping the player moving along the tree without having too many trailing techs or should I say getting to far ahead in beelining.
It's about being able to make some assumptions about what Combat Classes would've been unlocked 'by this point'. Yes, simplifying somewhat but it also makes sense.
I have not looked too deep into this but if Modern Physics is not within the tech line anymore it may break some techs and/or buildings. So we should look into this closely to see how it impact that stuff.
Well... keep looking and I'll keep looking but I think it should be ok from all I could see.
We would have to look up Vokarya's on the Zeplins but I am guessing it was important in keeping the player from getting to far ahead without knowing important techs.
Since only a few nations developed Zeplins I'd be keen to make it an optional tech entirely.
Well electronics is important too I suggest you just make it require Radar AND Modern Physics AND Electronics. Unless one of those is redundant.
Under this proposal Electronics is necessary for Modern Physics so it would be redundant.
I can roll with that, however it just means from looking on the tree it won't look as cool to have Sonar lead to Deep Sea Exploration.
Sonar IS a prereq for Radar...
Well we should check to make sure they do either directly or induirectly through the other techs requirements.
I looked and they don't so it was a good catch on your part.
I think this is already covered with Antigrav tech since if you can remove gravity you can also make gravity. Which is why Gravity Traps are under Antigrav tech.
Anti-grav tech would allow an item to be attached to another item that forces that item to 'fall' away from the Earth, inversing the gravitational pull of existing gravitational fields. It could create a small local field that causes things within it to behave as if gravity has been reversed within this location. It cannot create or remove gravity itself. It can only enhance the effect, counter the effect or inverse the effect of an existing source of gravity (such as the planet.) In essence it's much like a very powerful density control, able to create even an 'inverse' density.
We actually can do this already. Not with Fields as has been proposed here, but with our scant understanding of the odd physics involved in mono-atomic gold. It's been found that heating mono-atomic gold it, unlike anything else we know of in nature, actually loses density at a molecular level. Superheated it's capable of taking an inverse density (aka it gets to the point where it floats rather than sinks or repels rather than attracts in reaction to gravitational force.) This IS antigravity. We have it... it just takes far too much power to do anything significant with it, far too much heat to contain to a useful degree. And keeping the gold mono-atomic during all these heatings and coolings becomes a trick. Gold's natural form is bi-atomic meaning it's bonded to itself in pairs when found naturally. It's a very fascinating subject though. I've based my own Sci-Fi writings on this effect among other theories regarding mono-atomic metals.
So wait why is Antigrv separated into Mid-Transhuman and Mid Galactic? If anti-gravity why should the weight of the ship matter?
At true Gravitation Control the size and weight of the ship does become meaningless but at Anti-gravity, the density of the object does need to be countered by a flow of energy pouring into the mechanism by which the gravity is countered and potentially reversed. The more energy poured into that, the more it may take away from weapon systems, thus the limits of Wireless Electricity transfers are utilized for the Medium sized land based hovering vehicles with their local generator mechanisms powering their weapons. It's just too much at this stage for huge naval vessels to be completely anti-grav capable though anti-grav IS used to assist in the construction and navigation of such vehicles. Anti-grav certainly helps with getting materials, crews and smaller ships into orbit and definitely helps with space navigation a lot.
I am not really satisfied with this but, I can go with the idea that gravity/antigrav takes a lot of energy to do so its like taking the power of a sun for antigrav and taking the power of many suns for gravity control.
Yes, power would be a factor. Plus, if Anti-Gravity technology can only make an object lighter or heavier in relationship to existing gravitation fields then it cannot create a thrust of its own except to create thrust away from the planet or towards it. It would not be able to create forward cross-planet motion and even an object of great weight would still find the water barrier to be difficult to cross with absolute ease. Whales, for example, would be crushed on the surface of the land by their own weight while are bouyant enough to be lightly suspended in the water. Sea/Air ships would encounter modularization difficulties in transitioning between the two seamlessly to the point that it's more effective to differentiate the roles of Air and Sea still while the Land is empowered to adopt the whole planet (except water subsurface though they can probably move up and down in the seas and with some limits side to side, forward and back, but nothing like the maneuverability under the waves as these Droid ships would possess).
It's just not the same as using complete control of gravitational energy fields to move your ship about wherever you wish it to go. That sort of power could tunnel as easily as it can dive but wouldn't want to do so with such sizes as the fractures in the Earth would create horrific tectonic events planetwide.
That and since power is a factor and is not absolutely free and in endless volumes yet, it's more optimal for the seas themselves to be navigated by more dedicated machines.
I have some actual game dynamics in mind here to differentiate submerged vs surface game states for units on plots. (A simplistic method of dividing abilities to interact useful for now until later development of more depth and elevation management on units.)
"Euclidean 5-Space Geometry" covers "Gravity Control".
Then we should just kill that tech. Gravity Control should precede the ability to stabilize a singularity wouldn't you think? Without Gravity Control there's really no way to even approach a singularity safely. Even Planet and Star creation seems to be something that could reasonably be expected would come AFTER such field control.
I'm not a fan of the 'Euclidean' techs in general really since they don't give a clue to any non-physicist what they actually do unless you research the tech in the pedia perhaps.
I can see taking Gravity Control away from the prereqs for Interstellar Colonization except that the Gravity Field engines that this naval phase is indicating is implied here as a prerequisite for the HUGE seedships that have the same operational capabilities as these naval vessels in addition to interstellar thrust engines (which these military monstrosities DON'T have so as to maintain a huge focus on weapon systems - they'd be far more powerful than most interstellar ships until MUCH larger vessels and would probably upgrade later into fleet ships very similar to Star Destroyers from Star Wars that DO merge this amount of military might with long range deep space exploration capabilities.)
This actually presumes that we'll be extending the Galactic era beyond this point significantly. I know I'd like to see a lot more there. But what we have now is a good point to develop up to at the moment imo.
5 space geometry just sits there at the moment as a nearly useless and purposeless rung along the route to the last tech. And I don't think I'd be alone in reading it and thinking "Gee... what the hell does that mean?" and leaving it at that.
No offense intended to CF who I'm sure based this model on some good theoretical research. Just not so good for game design imo. And despite the BEST physics theories of our modern era, SOME assumptions we're currently making are GOING to prove false. Easy enough to envision this being one of them since it's terribly theoretical and alternative theories not only exist but could clearly tweak our current understandings of how we'll enable ourselves to do something (in this case generation of gravitational fields.)
H said:
I think your thinking of Transverse Euclidean Geometry. Infact Let me look up the stuff from Civ Fuehrer back with the AtoM mod.
As you can see Transverse Euclidean Geometry covers "Phasing"
So it would seem. Sorta.
If you look at the tech tree and what it unlocks and infer some of what the Transverse (for short) tech means, it insinuates that it means an object can be existing basically in two places at once, both in time and distance. Phasing would be a dual existence along the electromagnetic spectrum only. In a sense it's becoming something like light itself and maintaining integrity. It's not about needing to fold space but it's necessary for making a craft capable of navigating a wormhole and is a direct result of the developments at Transtangible Neutrino Accelerators. The two dual states reflected in these two techs, Phasing and Transverse would be differing types of dual states. Some weaponries would affect each differently.
I was holding the Transverse tech to be a development that really only will eventually apply to the spacefaring upgrades of these 'last of the naval' units. (Hopefully among a much more intricate tech tree developed out into this region of tech developments.)
One envisionable difference in warfare application: Transverse would enable one ship to surround an enemy ship as it can exist in 20 different places at once around the enemy ship. Phasing would not. Locationally, a phased ship would still have its one location.
Vacuum tubes were used in early radios - I built a few as a hobby in the late 1950's.
Also they were used in an early computer at Bletchley Park UK - during WW2, to break the German cypher codes. This was in the 1940s. Probably the first electrical computer.
Electronics were not widely available till some time in the 1960s. I believe the first electronic use was by an IBM computer in 1955.
As I lived through this transitional period as a child and then a teenager (studying electronics - as part of a Radio Telegraphy job on ships.). Vacuum tubes and electronic chips were considered to be miles apart.
Do not believe what you may read on Wikipedia. It is like adding the horse and cart and the car to the same tech.
Agree. This should also unlock a Bletchley Park Wonder later.
Remember vacuum tubes were used for radio before WW2. Can not verify this but they were probably only considered for computing during the war.
Just my 2 cents.
I'm going to have to look deeper at my original intentions for swapping the two so can't comment on THAT quite yet BUT I do think that such an early computing tech simply should be named Early Computing and we should then find a good place to fit Personal Computers. Splitting the tech in two basically seems to be the answer here.
I think the PC development was a major turning point and should have its own place in our histories. I suggest x81/y13 with prereqs of Semiconductors, Television and Microwaves (if that seems appropriate to those who know computing science better than I do - or simply Modern Physics otherwise). So tentatively I'm proposing to then keep Semiconductors and EARLY Computing right where they are and I'll have to rethink the impact on these ships.
And I can agree that early computing as it's been discussed here is also important... BUT it needs some further thought as to what exactly it will unlock since almost everything on Computers now would be moved on to the new PC tech.
I'll update my chartings on these after this discussion gets sorted out or unless you want to see how it all looks in any particular spots.
And by switching Majors when I did I never got my degree. That's what really hurt. 
)))
I think somthing got mixed up here. I am saying ...
