A New Research Paradigm for 4x Games

[FarAway Sooner]

So, I've been reading a lot of military history in the last few years that looks at the evolution of specific weapons systems, and it's got me thinking about how technology evolves and gets applied in warfare (in real life and in games).  Stephen Zaloga's Armored Thunderbolt, Eric Bergerud's Fire in the Sky, and James Hornfischer's Neptune's Inferno all offer up great insights and riveting drama around the development of armored, aerial, and naval weapons systems in WW II.

Which has me thinking about 4x games.  It's always bothered me that weapons systems always work as modeled in 4x games.  And it's always bothered me that, as soon as I know how to produce my first Ion Cannon, I can mass-produce 50 of them on 20 battleships at the same time, without any hiccup or delay.  I felt like Polaris Sector, with it's differentiation between Theoretical Research and Applied Research (which was borrowed from the Space Empires series, I think?), was a nice wrinkle on this.  It helped that the introduction of new weapons systems really could dramatically change the way battles were conducted (e.g., the development of Plasma Torpedo Technology suddenly made your fighters and bombers real capital ship-busters).

But there was no real drama around how you developed individual weapons systems.  In games where you research components and then put them on a ship (whether it's Master of Orion or Alpha Centauri or Polaris Sector), you never get attached to your weapons systems.  There's a nostalgia that gets attached to something like the German Panther or the P-51 Mustang or the F-4 Phantom that is just missing from these games.

So, with all that build-up, if anybody's still reading...  Why not simply add an Engineering capability that is accumulated/used in tandem with the Research ability?  Coming up with great components is one thing, but being able to put them all together in a great vehicle is something else entirely!

Research is used to come up with new components (whether it's a better torpedo in a WW II game or a Positron Flywheel Capacitor in a sci-fi 4x game), but Engineering is then required to put them into a new vehicle.  Even after you pay the intended price in Engineering points, you might get something that performs a little better than intended or you might get something that performs a little worse than intended.  Or maybe both!

By the same token, you can skimp on Engineering points and come up with a weapons system that goes into production more quickly but is likely to have a lot more warts (think about the King Tiger), or you can really lavish Engineering points on a system and get something that works really well even if it's not quite as state-of-the-art as some (think about the Sherman tank by late 1944).  This would offer a number of game design benefits:

• It limits the "design churn" micromanagement that afflicts so many games today, where every new improvement in research requires a tiny new tweak to an existing design to get it in there.
• It'd also lead to an attachment to certain weapon system (think about the F4U Corsair or the T-34 tank) that end up lasting a lot longer than they would otherwise.
• Lastly, it'd introduce a certain element of suspense as you start to roll out new systems onto the battlefield.

Does anybody see this as a welcome change from the "Research Heavy Tanks / Build Heavy Tanks" paradigm that's been in place since Sid Meier's Civilization?

[OJsDad]

Have you ever looked at Aurora.  You research different techs then you have to design the systems and research those designs before you can use them. 

It's free.  A brand new overhauled version is in the works, Aurora C#.  Don't think there is a release date yet on it.

http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php

[Jarhead0331]

MOO3 at least models a "prototype" phase for newly researched techs that requires time before the player can begin to utilize the technology in designs.

[FarAway Sooner]

Never played Aurora.  Haven't had the time to pull myself up the reportedly massive learning curve there.

The prototype period is an interesting idea.  Glad to hear somebody's run with that, at least.  It still strikes me as missing fully 50% of designing any kind of new complicated system--you don't really know if it'll be a dog that hunts until you turn it loose!

The engineering outcomes wouldn't be radical, I woudn't think, unless you REALLY skimped on Engineering investment.  Maybe just something like "20% less maintenance costs" (for the Sherman tank), "+5% to Attack, +20% to Defense" (for the T-34), or "+20% to Attack in the hands of a Veteran pilot" (for the P-38, where the central positioning of most of the guns meant you could fire a barrel of lead 1,000 yards or more without dissipation, when compared to wing-mounted guns that had to converge at a particular distance). 

Little wrinkles like that would make units stand out more.  Of course, such a mechanism would also rely on not being able to spam designs all over the place, or it just becomes a micromanagement nightmare.  But that, too, I think, would be keeping more in line with modern R&D behavior.  You'd need some mechanism for minor tweaks to upgrade existing designs, but even there, you'd want to seriously limit the number of new designs.

[jamus34]

Personally  I also really like Polaris Sector's take on tech.

You need to research the fundamental sciences to achieve the applied sciences that give you tech. You can force research a specific tech at the cost of years of loss in both the fundamental and any non-related applied tech research.

Only thing I don't like is it is extremely rigid in that mindset. Science also has it's fair share of Eureka moments that I think are better modeled elsewhere.

I also like the Sword of the Stars system that if you are trying to research what is I guess an alien tech there's a possibility you can dump turns and turns of research into it and still never be able to learn the tech, IE it is too alien to comprehend or create a usable application of.

I also like the game system of prototyping. I think that needs a little more balance to it; IE typically a prototype is much more costlier than a production model (rightly) but my typical assumption is that a prototype is also typically over engineered so for that 1 production you should receive certain bonus (maybe a bit more power, durability, etc).

I also like the ability to retrofit (which is fairly common in 4x) one issue I do see is sometimes you can retrofit too much so a design never becomes obsolete. I think Rule the Waves does a good job of allowing you to retrofit but it will quickly reach a point that an old model will be easily outclassed.