Oh No - Not Another Research Tree Suggestion ^_~
As people are aware, when you research a couple of machine gun upgrades you are presented with the light cannon, then the twin machine gun. When you research engineering, you get a whole lot of options.
My muse here is what if gateway technologies, or any technologies for that matter, didn't simply automatically appear?
What if the moment you set up a research center it begins to 'ping' technologies that would be in your list, with a slim chance of success?
Would it not be interesting if, say, flamers became available to a player sooner than machine guns because machine guns simply took longer to show up and therefore influenced a player to go that direction in specialization?
I do think that this would really shake things up and the element of predictability in research.
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Just like the fog of war, a shroud of mystery veils all technologies at the start.
Then, when the first research facility shows up, it begins to ping the three start technology branches at random at regular intervals. After a short time one of the technologies is tagged and the player has the choice to start researching it.
In the name of consistency, technologies are tagged randomly and it takes an amount of time to unlock it for research. Or perhaps have something like a medium cannon be tagged 4 times as compared to one time for a machine gun before it truly becomes available for research.
As the labs are busy researching technologies they no longer ping the tree and so periods of idleness can be good for unlocking potential technologies for which the prerequisites are ripe. Each lab gets its chance to tag a particular technology.
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It would be nice if research mode could be tagged and set in the pre-skirmish/ multiplayer section, allowing players to determine what kind of game they are about to have and permitting inclusion of experimental modes without potentially compromising the core gameplay.
