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XCOMUFO & Xenocide

Progresive Research


K-Tana

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Playing XCOM the other night, something suddenly struck me as odd. No matter how complicated the object, once you have finished researching it you suddenly know everything about it at once. And this gave me an idea for xenocide...

 

What if, when researching an object, you don't learn everything at once, just a bit at a time. Research times would be reduced accordingly, of course, but this way, you might have Elerium Level 1 research, Level 2 etc, with each level increasing your knowledge of the object and increasing it's useful possibilites.

 

But here's a crucial point - you are never told when you know everything about an object. So, you think that you know everything about Elerium-115, that it's a starship fuel. But what you don't know but would know if you researched it some more - was that it also has use in weapons (ie Blaster Bomb). This could mean however, that you might spend hours of scientist time on a fruitless search, but that does add to the realism.

 

This would require more entries into the X-Net, one for each stage, as well as a potentially more complex research tree. It would also need a consistant background, so that entires for one object might reveal that there is more to something else that you thought you knew everything about.

 

Any comments? I know this may be too comlex for a first build of xenocide.

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The downside to this is that after you play 1 game you know when to stop. Another option for v1+ would be increased efficiency in its use. For example, after you learn tech level 1 it costs 10 units to build something, at tech level 2 it costs you 7, at tech level 3 it costs 5, and tech level 4 it costs 4. You'd be told "we can't make it any more efficient it seems", and the research in that field is done. As you get diminishing returns at the cost of more and more research hours, the most efficient method is to learn level 1 in everything, then start level 2, etc.
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Hmmm, yes. I like the efficiency idea - the fact that the more you look into something, the easier ways to produce it become apparent. It also helps in that it helps stop additional levels becoming useless if there isn't a tech-tree upgrade associated with them. I do agree however, that playing the game again may spoil not knowing when you know everything about something, and that I doubt this will ever reach V1.
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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 2 months later...

What if new levels had prerequesites? Like, you research the Elerium, PP, PR, and HP, and discover something, so you need to research Elerium and plasma weapons some more. Then you figure out how to research the P cannon.

 

It'd be a different tech tree altogether, though. It'd be different in that some things need to be researched several times as new discoveries happen, and new things are found out about alien tech.

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