The Tech Web

[AriochIV]

Here's a composite image of the whole tech web (including the outer tier of nodes visible on the "minimap"):

Spoiler :

(Updated 15 August 2014)

One interesting thing that immediately comes to mind is that the technologies that reward Affinity points (these are the techs with a +symbol on the left in red, yellow or turquoise for Purity, Supremacy and Harmony, respectively) are interspersed throughout the whole web, rather than being segregated in one particular section of the web. In many cases, two different "leaves" of the same node give points for different Affinities.

Also notice that the leaf techs are actually more expensive than the nodes. It seems you'll be able to get to the edge of the web pretty quickly if you ignore the leaf techs.

 

[TheLoneAmigo]

Man, I know we're not meant to keep making this comparison, but the technology names really are disappointingly boring compared to SMAC.

 

[stealth_nsk]

Unfortunately most of the icons are placeholders. Difficult to tell anything specific.

 

[Ivan Hunger]

I was able to freeze frame while the cursor was hovering over a few of the techs.

Alien biology gives worker units a promotion that makes them immune to miasma damage, and also allows them to clear miasma from tiles.

Terraforming allows workers to build something called "terrafarms", as well as floatstone quarries.

The player briefly hovers over ecology, but I haven't been able to find a legible frame yet. From what I can make out, it seems to unlock a "repulsar" something or other, perhaps the satellite or building that keeps aliens away from cities.

I also cannot find a legible frame of the building that unlocks when you research pioneering, but it appears to be similar to the caravansary from Civ 5, providing some kind of bonus to trade caravans originating from the city where the building is constructed.

One interesting thing that immediately comes to mind is that the technologies that reward Affinity points (these are the techs with a +symbol on the left in red, yellow or turquoise for Purity, Supremacy and Harmony, respectively) are interspersed throughout the whole web, rather than being segregated in one particular section of the web.

Keep in mind that this may only be the case for early techs. The developers have said that players won't necessarily commit to a certain affinity until later in the game.

Looking at the way the techs branch out, I can easily foresee an upper-left that is mostly supremacy-oriented, an upper-right that is mostly harmony-oriented, and a lower middle that is mostly purity-oriented.

 

[AriochIV]

Terraforming allows workers to build something called "terrafarms", as well as floatstone quarries.

The player briefly hovers over ecology, but I haven't been able to find a legible frame yet. From what I can make out, it seems to unlock a "repulsar" something or other, perhaps the satellite or building that keeps aliens away from cities.

I also cannot find a legible frame of the building that unlocks when you research pioneering, but it appears to be similar to the caravansary from Civ 5, providing some kind of bonus to trade caravans originating from the city where the building is constructed.

In addition to the Float Stone Quarry and a "Gaian Well" building, Terraforming unlocks the Terrascape improvement. "Tile Improvement buildable by Workers on any terrain. Maintentance: 3 energy. Provides: Food +2?, Production +2?, Culture +2"

Ecology "Allows the ????? and Ultrasonic Fence buildings; allows the Miasmic Repulsor orbital unit."

The Trade Depot unlocked by Pioneering "Allows 2 Trade Routes to be established from this city." Pioneering also unlocks the Trade Vessel. "Moves: 3; Cost 70 production.
Naval Trade Unit. Used to establish Trade Routes by sea between your cities and other cities, outposts, or stations. Trade Routes generate yields or increase growth rate for the trading partners, but trade units are vulnerable to attack and their routes must be protected by military units."

 

[stealth_nsk]

The Trade Depot unlocked by Pioneering "Allows 2 Trade Routes to be established from this city." Pioneering also unlocks the Trade Vessel. "Moves: 3; Cost 70 production.
Naval Trade Unit. Used to establish Trade Routes by sea between your cities and other cities, outposts, or stations. Trade Routes generate yields or increase growth rate for the trading partners, but trade units are vulnerable to attack and their routes must be protected by military units."

Unless Trade Depot is a wonder, trade routes are extremely different from BNW. 2 trade routes per city is a lot. I hope the trade routes are managed in different way than in BNW, because it's would be a lot of micromanagement.

Also, it's interesting what "yields" means here.

 

[3of5]

Geophysics "Allows the ????? and Ultrasonic Fence buildings; allows the Miasmic Repulsor orbital unit."

I'm pretty sure thats ecology, not Geophysics unlocking this 3 (!) items. Also the tooltip in your framecap is placed in a way the mouse hovering over ecology would place it and the shown science ammount needed is more in line with the turn counter with low science output.

The leaf techs being more expensive than the stem techs (announced the other way round earlier, if i recall correctly) makes it more probable that one will research all around but would only pick the leafs that are useful to countering specific problems one encounters while colonising Planet. That way the most natural way to select affinity is simply by roleplaying the colony. One would just do the most sensible things in given circumstances and suddently you have an affinity, organically evolving from this decisions. It would be cool, if affinity modifiers could be set to be hidden (in the tech tree and in quests) so it would not influence decisions (but become apparent after the decision in the top left counter or a small message).

That way i would not research alien biology because i wanted to contact planetmind one day, but because that damn miasma all around on this stupid fungus planet seriously hampers the development of my fledgling colony

 

[Ivan Hunger]

That way the most natural way to select affinity is simply by roleplaying the colony. One would just do the most sensible things in given circumstances and suddently you have an affinity, organically evolving from this decisions.

I think this will depend somewhat on the faction you're playing as. Affinity, like any other resource, will want to be prioritized by factions that specialize in it.

If you're playing as someone with a penalty in affinity (everyone revealed so far except the Kavithan Protectorate), then sure, who cares? Each tech is only giving you 1 or 2 affinity levels anyway, so just pick whichever techs allow you to best take advantage of your territory.

If you're playing as a faction that gets a bonus in affinity however (the Kavithan Protectorate), then you're going to want to commit to a single affinity very early on. Because of your unique trait, each tech you research will give you loads of affinity levels, which is wasted if they're not all for the same one. And because you also have a science penalty, it's especially important to get the most out of every tech, since you're going to be researching them more slowly than your rivals. Hopefully, the passives you get from committing to an affinity will outweigh the handicap of not optimizing your tiles right away.

Like so many things in Civ, it's a tradeoff. Committing to an affinity early will give you certain options. Optimizing the tiles in your territory early will give you certain others. Which you choose to capitalize on will depend not only on the circumstances of your starting location, but also on the initial "seeding" bonuses you choose, and just the type of player you are in general.

 

[3of5]

most ist speculation at this point

flag: colonizing unit or action (Habitation: explorer or found colony, Pioneering: colonist unit & build outpost)
octagonal shape: buildings (Habitation: clinic & monument, Pioneering: trade depot, Ecology: ultrasonic fence, Engineering: thorium reactor) FPO seems to be a placeholder for buildings (For Placeholder Only)
hexagonal shape: tile improvements (Fabrication: road)
round shape: wonders? (mere speculation!)
short barreled gun: soldier unit (Habitation) & respective upgrades
long barreled gun: unknown infantry unit or explorer? (speculation!)
shield sword and spear: orbital Units (Ecology: misma repulsor)
ship with gun turret: all ships and respective upgrades (since there does not seem to be another ship symbol) (Pioneering: Trade ship)
crossed swords: cavalry unit (speculation!) as seen in Engineering
vehicle with inclined gun barrel: artillery unit (speculation!) as seen in computing
crossed out cogwheel: tile improvement (may be placeholder symbol, since road already has its own hexagonal icon) (Terraforming: terrafarm & floatstone quarry)
circled sun: no clue whatsoever
colored symbols with + sign: affinity progress
colored symbols: convert production (speculation!) engineering could be stockpile research (which would not make that much sense) and chemistry stockpile energy (which would make sense) and geophysics? This would reflect how out of place this symbols are, all clustered around early techs, similar to their pendants in civV

 

[3of5]

If you're playing as someone with a penalty in affinity (everyone revealed so far except the Kavithan Protectorate), [...]
If you're playing as a faction that gets a bonus in affinity however (the Kavithan Protectorate)

Is this a faction trait (as +20% uptime for sats) or just more culture? If the latter this might not even have anything to do with the affinity mechanic at all.

 

[stealth_nsk]

short barreled gun: soldier unit (Habitation) & respective upgrades
long barreled gun: unknown infantry unit or explorer? (speculation!)

Upgrades to units are gained with affinity progress, not techs.
The reason why icons are repeating is simple - they are placeholders. So guessing about actual units will not work yet.

 

[Ivan Hunger]

Is this a faction trait (as +20% uptime for sats) or just more culture? If the latter this might not even have anything to do with the affinity mechanic at all.

We don't know for sure yet, which is why I created that other thread.

We do know that "religion" and culture are two different things, though, because some factions specialize in both, while others only specialize in one and struggle with the other. My assumption that "religion" actually means affinity values comes from comments made by the dev team in podcasts and the like, but I have no real solid evidence of it.

 

[3of5]

Man, I know we're not meant to keep making this comparison, but the technology names really are disappointingly boring compared to SMAC.

It is a bit more in line with landing on a Planet with a small detatchement of humans and having to research basic things first (like scout rovers and hydrofoils in SMAC). Most would just be adaptations to "old earth tech" given the lack of a highly differentiated supply network of rare metals. Even getting a thorium reactor basically just by researching 1 Tech is pretty bold (building the damn thing is a no brainer with 2200 tech, but the supply chain for the required materials and components must be a real head ache on planet) compared to SMAC where you had to reinvent industrial base and social psychology, and mainly just build solar panels for energy needs.

Our first challenge is to create an entire economic infrastructure, from
top to bottom, out of whole cloth. No gradual evolution from previous economic systems is possible, because there IS no previous economic system. Each interdependent piece must be materialized simultaneously and in perfect working order; otherwise the system will crash out before it ever gets off the ground.

—CEO Nwabudike Morgan,
“The Centauri Monopoly”

I have often been asked: if we have traveled between the stars, why can we not launch the simplest of orbital probes? These fools fail to understand the difficulty of finding the appropriate materials on this Planet, of developing adequate power supplies, and creating the infrastructure necessary to support such an effort. In short, we have struggled under the limitations of a colonial society on a virgin planet. Until now.

-- Col. Corazon Santiago,
"Planet: A Survivalist's Guide"

Keep in mind also that your first base is a small colony of a few thousand people (that can be the best and brightest depending on cargo selection (aristocrats lol), but few nonetheless), that only triples in population after several years (how exactly do they do that, defrost babies and accellerate their growth?).

That population growth mechanic might make sense in Civ, where the first turns are 20 years long and you could have immigration if your food supply allows for it, but on a virgin planet with no other humans around?). Imho the first base should already start with a higher population like 60.000 people (= 6 pop units and a full but slowly emptying granary to begin with) and scale it up linearly (not exponentially, like in civ tradition), meaning that on planet will never live much more than a few million people (descending from 8*60.000 settlers) with a highly mechanized industry to allow for diversified supply base (even allowing for orbital deployments). You're probably not outteching old earth with that few people probably though, or even be able to invade them (unless you just copy your neural gestalt and parallelise many tasks this way running multiple weapons platforms and industrial production chains at once (seriously how does purity expect to hold up with postsingularity growth anyway?).

 

[3of5]

Upgrades to units are gained with affinity progress, not techs.
The reason why icons are repeating is simple - they are placeholders. So guessing about actual units will not work yet.

That would explain why the marine icon is there often, while the other unit icons are visible only once. The circled sun symbols in the tech tree could mark this upgrades too. Planetary survey could grant a unit promotion to the explorer prompting the user to select between +1sight OR +50% combat bonus against native OR +1 movement. Weak in this case but you'll take the tech anyway to be able to build mines (speculation!).

@Ivan Hunger: right... faith, not culture, like i misinterpreted. Still curious about the underlying mechanic though.

The Player gets affinity also in other ways, not only by Tech. In the Gameplay Video at 6:40 the player is shown to research "genetic mapping" but already has one purity affinity point (all other purity Techs are farther out). He was playing relatively aggressive against native life though, so that might have been gained through quest.

 

[Ivan Hunger]

The Player gets affinity also in other ways, not only by Tech. In the Gameplay Video at 6:40 the player is shown to research "genetic mapping" but already has one purity affinity point (all other purity Techs are farther out). He was playing relatively aggressive against native life though, so that might have been gained through quest.

Three methods of acquiring affinity have been confirmed.

The first, and confirmed by the devs to be the most common, is researching techs associated with particular affinities.

The second, as you've noticed, comes from doing quests.

The third comes from trading with stations. If you trade with a station, they will occasionally ask you for advice on something or other. The decision you make will not only affect what you receive from trading with the station, it will also give you affinity.

 

[AriochIV]

I'm pretty sure thats ecology, not Geophysics unlocking this 3 (!) items. Also the tooltip in your framecap is placed in a way the mouse hovering over ecology would place it and the shown science ammount needed is more in line with the turn counter with low science output.

You're right, it's Ecology. Thanks for the correction.

 

[boghog]

Dang, I've fallen into the trap of allowing my expectations to get too high.
I was envisioning a VAST and much more granular web with loads of plausible interconnections - not something as structured and symmetrical as this. I know that this web has as many techs as CiV but this is supposed to be science fiction. I wanted something where your path through it would never be the same for different playthroughs. Something inspired by something like this:

Spoiler :

Sigh.

 

[Lord Tirian]

Sigh.

I think it's partially the presentation. If they decided to draw the leaves as extra nodes and use them as optional ORs for the next tech, the web would be a lot messier while being very similar in structure.

I applaud the clear presentation, having so many techs could look a lot messier. More impressive, but also less clear. This is probably a case where a clear presentation makes it less interesting.

Not a big fan of the names, though. They feel a bit... uninspired compared to, let's say, SMAC/X. Things like "Physics", "Genetics" or "Ballistics" don't feel like something "new". Sure, they represent incremental advances over current technologies in the context of the new planet... but after playing Civ5 and just discovering "Fusion", "Particle Physics" and so on, it feels like a step back.

 

[Fabio1701]

hmmm.. I agree with the boring names comment. I understand that on a virgin planet you need to "reinvent the wheel" somewhat, but researching physics? We already know physics since Newton's time, and presumably the colonists didn't forget. Yes, there needs to be a tech to be able to build what looks like form the pic a rifle and an observatory/lab, but why call it physics? Do they mean that the tech represents our infrastructural ability to DO physics? because throwing a baseball doesn't need a lot of infrastructure and you are doing physics there. And how can you have engineering without physics first? And it looks like I could go around chemistry and skip that tech to get some of the ones after chemistry, which means I could have a super advanced society who doesn't know the basics of chemistry?

I know it's nit picking, but it just seems weird. Hopefully the tech beyond the first and second level is more interesting. Anyone know how many levels there are?

Also, if I want robotics, to I need physics and engineering or will one do? are techs multi-prerequisite?

 

[stealth_nsk]

hmmm.. I agree with the boring names comment. I understand that on a virgin planet you need to "reinvent the wheel" somewhat, but researching physics?

Placeholders. The tech name is something which requires 1 minute to change.