So I started the “Consider making Banking payout progressive” as a means of making that tech “interesting” in later parts of the game … and that thread has become a generic tech discussion with lots of good ideas from various people.
As a reminder, the “problem” is that by the mid-game (especially in mega galaxies), the main techs that everyone works on (in order of importance) are Weapons → Manu → Terraforming. All the others become quite secondary … especially once you have “enough” (such as in HR).
So while Experimentation is quite useful early on, it rapidly becomes less interesting as players focus on a single tech. And especially when you get a lot of Science, if you get that 1-outa-7 “E” bonus, it’s a BFD, just saving you a few hours of research.
Since “Experimentation” is related to Science (at least by name!), what if “E” also provided a multiplier for your Science tech - i.e. similar to how Manu does for Industry?
I.e. in addition to the “random half your ‘E’ points at Production”, your Science generates more tech the higher your “E” is. I’m thinking something like:
Tech = Science x (E/10) … or maybe Science x ((E-5)/5)) but multiplier not less than 1
So this doesn’t have too much effect early on (especially the 2nd formula), but as the game progresses, E is actually useful as a multiplier to help your tech output.
Obviously this adds to the hyper-inflation problem … but I’m trying to think of some way to keep ALL of the tech “interesting” throughout the game
This would hopefully address Experimentation, progressive Banking would help there, and I’m thinking if we did “Warp Gate Levels”, then Scan & Range would be more useful.
I think NP would be more fun if all techs were better balanced/scalable and the end games weren’t just a Weapons/Manu/Terra-fest.