Tech Trees Dev Diary

[Leedot]

Over in the Dev Diary section of the site we've begun a series discussing the different areas of technology that players can research in the game starting with the fields of Combat and Trade.

http://www.zarksoft.com/cms/content.php?5-News

[Spartanius]

This looks very very similar to the way eve-online does it where you have categories(Gunnery, Drones), skills(small energy turret, Combat Drone Operation), ranks(multiplier for skill training time), and levels(level 1 through 5).

My Understanding:

Now this is what I am seeing, correct me if I am wrong. Instead of eve-online "ranks" you have teirs(kind of work the same), and instead of eve "levels" you have "ranks/upgrades"

So for example in Eve you might have...
Category: Spaceship Command
Skill: Medium Energy Turret - Operation of Medium Energy Turrets. 5% bonus to medium energy turret damage per level
Rank(training multiplier): 3
Levels: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5(max)
Required skills: Gunnery Level 3
- so if it is normally 30 minutes for a level 1 skill to train you multiply that by 3 for training time, and if it is one week for a level 5 you multiply that by 3 to get 21 days.

But in EotE you would have...
Category:Combat Skills
Skill: Strike Fleet Construction - Allows the production of Battlecruisers and Battleships. +5% defense to destroyers, cruisers, battlecruisers, and battleships per rank
Tier: 2 (takes 1 day to train skill initially)
Ranks: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5(not sure what cap there is)
Required skills: Either Orbital Defenses or Offensive Initiative on Teir 1 of Combat Skills must be trained

I figure since most people testing this game seem to play eve this would be a good analogy. No doubt eve influenced yall a lot

My questions and confusion:

1. How many ranks will you be able to train for each skill?
2. You wrote "Upgrades to Learned Skills take 1 day per rank to learn for all ranks other than rank 1 which takes 0.5 days to upgrade"
Now does that mean every rank/level you want to upgrade a skill to takes 1 day to train save for the first upgrade(training from level 1 to level 2) which is 0.5 days. Meaning you could spend 3.5 days ranking up ranking up "Plasma Arrmament" which would put it at rank 5 giving a 50% bonus to damage for capital ships.
this would be the 10% bonus for initially training the skill, the 0.5 days of training for level 2, and 3 days training levels 3, 4, and 5.

Am I understanding that right? Or do teirs act like multipliers for rank/level upgrade time?

[Leedot]

Hi Spartanius,

Diablo also has ranks for their skills but the time based progression was definitely inspired by Eve.

1 - There are 9 ranks per tech.

2 - Doh, I misspoke in that article but have now corrected it. It takes 1 day to upgrade a skill one rank except for tier 1 skills which take 0.5 days to upgrade per rank. So it would take if you went straight for Plasma Armament it would take 7 days to get to rank 1. Once you have Plasma Armament it would take you 4 more days to upgrade it to rank 5 granting a total bonus of 50% damage to your capital ships.

[Spartanius]

Ok that makes much more sense. 9 ranks will be intense, you could build a large capital ship fleet and practically double their firepower in 9 days.

[Leedot]

Part 2 of the Tech Tree Dev Diary is now up. We introduce the areas of Science, which grants players the ability to cloak ships and even collapse stars, and Fleet Control which opens up the use of deadly carriers and jump drives.

http://www.zarksoft.com/cms/content.php?131-Tech-Trees-Dev-Diary-Part-2

[zarkwizard]

Some of us did play a lot of EvE....

One of the factors to bringing in the time based build and skill learning was to keep things a little more even. Since it's a strategy game at heart we want to give the real-time movement, so you can explore and do various things while waiting for skills, or things to build.

At the same time we wanted to try to make it so people could have an even shot without having to micro-manage every aspect of their empire, and not give those that are 100% focused any huge advantage because they micro-manage.

While babysitting the game will give you a certain amount of edge due to exploration, and being ready to send your ships else where as soon as they reach a destination, it won't give you an advantage in what you can build, or learn. Although there is nothing wrong with knowing where your enemies.. er friends are..

[Spartanius]

I am trying to visit the link for the dev diary and now it is saying I don't have proper permissions? Is the page down?

[Leedot]

Odd.. I just logged out / cleared my cookies and it seems to be working for me. Are you still running into this problem?

[Chameleon]

2 - Doh, I misspoke in that article but have now corrected it. It takes 1 day to upgrade a skill one rank except for tier 1 skills which take 0.5 days to upgrade per rank. So it would take if you went straight for Plasma Armament it would take 7 days to get to rank 1. Once you have Plasma Armament it would take you 4 more days to upgrade it to rank 5 granting a total bonus of 50% damage to your capital ships.

It takes one less skill than the tier rank in an a given category to learn a skill of that rank. (So a tier 1 has no requirements, a tier 2 skill requires 1 skill in that category already, and a tier six skill requires five skills in that category already, etc..) Rank increases do not count towards this requirement.

Are you only allowed one skill per tier per category? (If yes, ignore the next question )
Could you not get a Tier 4 skill in 5.5 days?
2 x Tier 1, 1 x Tier 2 - giving 3 skills in the category in 2 days, then 3.5 days for the Tier 4 skill for a total time of 5.5 days (13 days for a rank 1 Tier 6 skill)

Cloaking: Ships/Fleets are invisible to other players/AI. Togglable active skill. Players cannot attack while cloaked and move at -50% speed. Speed penalty reduced -10% per rank..

Are the percentages compounding on the relative speed value, or on the absolute speed value?
So 50% penalty reduced by 10% is 45%, reduced again is 40.5%, leading to a maximum moving speed while cloaked of ~78.5% of maximum speed at rank 9, as opposed to 130% (-50% at rank 1, plus 80% (ranks 2-9)).

Another small thing, is it possible to do a stupidity suicide by having Graviton Physics (and making a black hole) without first having Hyperspace Physics?

Very much looking forward to this game

[Spartanius]

Odd.. I just logged out / cleared my cookies and it seems to be working for me. Are you still running into this problem?

Cleared my cookies and still can not access it. Says I don't have permissions. Tried it from another PC and from my ipod touch.

Now if I log out I can access it from all three devices, it has something to do with my account here. Strange...

---Question----
"Stealth Orbitals : High energy hide-and-seek. +10% per rank increase in orbitals avoiding detection" -
I am assuming the bonus multiplies an already established "Stealth strength"? Like the base strength is 10 and having the skill at rank 5 would give you a strength of 15 which is rolled against by someone trying to detect you?

Or is the bonus percentage the strength where with rank 9 you would have a 90% or 100% chance of avoiding detection.