Terra Incognita Techweb

[HandyVac]

Makes several changes to the early part of the techtree, to represent your initial explorations of a planet you know nothing about.

Key changes:

- No resources of any kind are visible at planetfall.

- Forests and marshes may not be cleared until the proper tech has been researched.

- Tectonic Scanner reveals basic resources instead of strategic ones.

Basic resources are revealed by the new techs Zoological Survey, Botanical Catalogue and Mineral Prosepecting, while Firaxite, Floatstone and Xenomass are revealed by the same techs that make them workable.

Screenshots:

Spoiler :

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[lilgamefreek]

This is very cool and I'm digging the polish you've put into this. A few comments on gameplay:

It's a fairly radical change to the early game to force players to research these survey techs. I would honestly prefer an option to continue building development from the start instead of going out and exploring the planet. I understand that moving vivariums to habitation tech alleviates some of the "nothing to build" issues of forcing players through the survey techs, but I still think the player should have options to look into internal development as well as external exploration.

Making the affinity resources invisible to the player is a huge change to how the game is played. Beyond Earth is designed largely around choosing a direction in the tech web that is best for your conditions. This includes picking affinities that best line with what is around you. While what resources are nearby is only a part of this equation, it's a large part, and by no knowing what is close to them, players might find themselves pursuing an affinity and finding they wasted a great deal of research on an inoppurtune path. There is some value in design this way, but I would argue the affect on gameplay is an overall negative and more people will find it frustrating than thrilling.

 

[HandyVac]

Thanks for the comments.

My intention with having the affinity resources revealed late is it should stir up conflict between civs in the mid-game, in much the same way as in Civ V conflicts flared up when resources like Oil or Aluminium were revealed, since in vanilla BE I think it's too easy to turtle within the little patch of territory around your landing site and never need to expand or explore much. With affinity resources not revealed until after you've picked your path, chances are you won't have the resource you want (unless you got lucky) and will need to go out and get some, either by racing other civs to colonise prevously-worthless and overlooked land or by invading your neighbours.

You have a point about the routes in the early techweb being limited though, even though the survey techs are cheap. I might try having physics or engineering linked straight from habitation, to give a "buildings and units" path for people who want to leave resource reveals till later.

 

[Diemex]

It's been 7 years since I logged into this site. Wow. Didn't know I still had an account.

Anyhow... I felt compelled to login (and would have re-registered if need be) just to say THANKS for this mod. It really sets up a more logical, challenging and varied start for the game. And you are correct in that it breaks the 'I'll turtle up and follow path xyz because xyz is right here'

I love it.

I just have one small issue that may or may not be related to the mod... when I reload a quick save... the tech tree reverts back to normal and all the resources on the map are revealed. I don't know why this happens... the game says its configuring game data and loading the mods. Perhaps I'm doing something wrong ?