A Research Suggestion

[JerseyJohn]

A Research Suggestion from our good friend, Gaylord Focker, currently away on sabattical.

Greetings friends and fellow SC players, i come touting and excelent suggestion for the upcoming sequel to SC. A major flaw i noticed in the game is the tech system.

I don't like the current one and think the game could be greatly improved with at least an option for a historical tech system instead of the current spend and pray system in use today. Instead of having to waste massive amounts of credits on the roulette wheel of tech hoping to "win" why not have the German rocket tech for example increase according to historical date on it's own. I think this would create a much better game and shed the old Axis and Allies crutch of playing dice to gain new and exciting prizes. Even a slight variable added in to the predetermined tech dates would suffice so in case the war kicks of early on front a b or c , you can't plan around tech dates as you have scientists not seers who would magically actually be competent in their wild ambiguous claims.

Jersey John being the posting who-or that he is, was kind enough to cut and paste this message for me and to him goes my thanks.

-- It was a priveledge, Gaylord.

[Edwin P.]

That's a good idea, but how would you handle the large amount of MPPs that is freed up. The Axis would use it to purchase even more units.

[Night]

I don't know about that one :/

[JerseyJohn]

Originally posted by Edwin P.:

That's a good idea, but how would you handle the large amount of MPPs that is freed up. The Axis would use it to purchase even more units.

Gaylord's reply:

Gaylord Focker Posted: Apr 29 2004, 04:36 AM

Junior Member

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Joined: 25-April 04

Thanks Jersey John , to that question i would answer with this, not only Germany's economic scale would be adjusted to show that the nation was exerting recources in the war of science, but all other major nations as well. Simply make the Axis +Allied nations pay a turnly tribute of credits to the AI which would justify the later breakthroughs in tech.

Gaylord Focker Posted: Apr 29 2004, 04:40 AM

Junior Member

Group: Members

Posts: 33

Member No.: 24

Joined: 25-April 04

Or even improve the econmoic side of the game as well? The Mahatten project i would like to think was more than the US government throwing tons of money at tech, hoping to eventauly get something for their money one of those years.

Also industrial tech was not really a huge scientific break through for the US, it was just the task of mobilizing the factories we already had for war, we did not need to pay a team of scientists to figure out a way to build lots of stuff cheaper during the early 40's.

[vveedd]

Historical research is a very good idea. I wanted to suggest it also.

[Sombra]

One Point of this game is to change history:

Research and development is related to the money you spend and to luck.

If the Americans get trashed and don´t have the resources they simply can not build more advanced planes. If a player thinks the Germans should have developed stronger and faster tanks he should be able to do it and see the results.

The mayor drawbacks of the old system were IMHO:

- Instant upgrade of all units across Europe

- Research money is never spend

- All research areas cost the same even if some are vastly superior to other

It seems that Hubert has adressed most if not all of these points though I am happy.

[Gen.Metaxas]

Helo All

Can't wait for SC2, I think the last time I played SC1 was probably last fall.

Its probably too late for a major change however here goes. How about puting all of your good ideas into one system.

Lets assume every country puts 100 mpps/per turn in each tech and based on history we get the following semi gauranteed results.

Rockets

Germany get an advance in say 4 turns

Russia get an advance in 4 turns

Great Britain gets an advance in 5 or 6 turns

Subs

Germany 4

England 5

Russia 8

Us 5

Bombers

England 4

US 4

Germany 6

Russia 7

Basically the ammount of MPPs required to get to the next tech is based on history. Which I am not an expert on. But simply put Germany and Russia had good tanks Italy din't. Germany and Russia had forms of rockets everybody else din't.

Now to add variability we add two items.

1) Economics - each country can allocate as much as they can afford and in any or all techs if they want. However each country will have a predetermined easy or hard time of achieving that tech.

2) Luck - depending on the ammount of money you are spending monthly on a tech you recieve an opportunity to recieve free tech points on you path to collecting enough tech points to get the tech you have been developing.

Bottom Line

Each technology requirs X tech points to achieve.

The X tech points for each technology is different for each country based on history.

Its upto the player to decide how many mpps he will spend on each turn and on each tech.

However the ammount he spends will increase his chances to win free tech points.

In such a scenario the game will be more historical and when you see your enemies tanks are kicking your infantry's ass you can make the desicion to focus on anti tank tech immidiately at a cost of not buying more cheap cannon fodder.

Any way its a thought, so what are yours?

[JerseyJohn]

And our phantom host replied ...

Gaylord Focker Posted: May 1 2004, 09:58 PM

My idea for economics is'nt free!

[Komet-163]

I like this Idea, would it then be a good idea for say if the war ran in to 1946 the Komets the Ju - 390's the Type XXI subs Gloster Meteors and the panzer 7's (the mouse) Be available to

players?

[Komet-163]

Whoops i forgot to add this also Will The Air to air X-4 guided rockets and all of the german weapons that where under development but fortunatly never had enough time to bring terror to the allies

[Tigleth Pilisar]

What I don't like about the old system "pay and then pray" as you put it, is that the MPPs are all spent up front. You can continue to benefit from 250 MPP spent in 1939 without paying a penny after. It doesn't make that much sense.

I would be in favour of a budget - a certain amount of money dedicated to research every turn. This would reflect the ongoing cost of research.

I would also add some sort of cumulative effect of spending money on a particular tech. I'm not sure how it would work, but lets say 2,000 MPP (nearly) guarantees an advance. Every 100MPP spent increases the % of success by 5%. So once 1,000 has been spent you have a 50% chance. These numbers and the formula could obviously be different, but the concepts would be 1) Have to keep paying for research to succeed, and 2) get some cumulative benefit for past research.

History could be added to research by giving countries certain bonuses in different techs, giving them a bit of unique advantage. Or at certain historical dates a cumulative research effect could be added as a bonus for future research. That way the player would only access the bonus for, say, tanks if he was researching tanks.