Research... Anything else aside from teleportation?

[ezra-r]

Title says it all, is there something else to research aside from the teleportation stuff?

Or the teleportation is an excuse to say you have "research" in the game? Not trying to be mean, but it looks like that in the description.

Also Those "?" in the building factory screenshot, next to the modules you can build, you can see some and some others are "?". How do you get those? missions? faction relationship, working for pirates for special modules and cool things like that?

[X2-Illuminatus]

From the Q&A thread:

The player will have ability to research new technologies. Will the player will do it in specialized research modules as part of sandbox gameplay, or is it scripted part of story line (chain of missions where you acquire tech)?
Research is currently fairly limited in scope, so not really a "sandbox" feature in itself.

[ezra-r]

Thanks @X2-Illuminatus

Still sounds to me like it means "research = research teleportation"

[Nikola515]

I already asked that question in X4 ask question multiple time but for some reason CBJ never answered it. We know that we will need to scan stations modules for blueprints when building stations.... Perhaps we will need to research those blueprints so we can build those modules ?

[Falcrack]

The way research is handled in the Mayhem mod for X3 is fairly good. The way it works, is if you wish to be able to produce an existing ship or laser type in your own shipyard, you must research it. To research a ship, you must scan an existing ship at short range, which has its shields down. Scanning the ships is a hostile act, so scanning any ship risks a conflict, because you are basically stealing technology.

But, scanning is only the first part. Once you have scanned a ship, you must set your research station to research the desired ship, which takes time, depending on the ship value. Once you have spent the time to research it, you may then build it.

So research is not a means to gain access to weapons or ships which nobody else has in game. Rather, it is a means to basically copy the ability to produce something that somebody else already has.

[RAVEN.myst]

So, really, it ought to be called "reverse engineering", then...

[Killjaeden]

I am not a fan of the research thing either. Its just seems so backwards and gamey that somehow the player with his small tiny company somehow is involved/ is the leader in development of revolutionary technology.
It is like an overused trope in scifi games. You are the player, and because you are the player you get all the prototypes and every super-scientist-genius (who in 90% is always alone and independant of every faction, broke on cash and without any help) somehow needs your help in completing research on never seen before technology.

It just crashes the suspension of disbelief wall at this point for me, because pretty much every scifi game seems to have it.

Wouldnt it be more interesting if new technology would become available in the whole universe, without beeing directly attached to actions of the players? You as the player would witness how the universe changes over time and how this technology goes through its development stages. E.g. first overexcited news articles about what could be - sort of a hype phase - then as research and testing progresses more realistic prognosis on what could be. Then first appearance of prototypes with very limited availability (maybe tied to allegiance to groups and factions and also monetary hurdles), with malfunctions, defects and other unexpected behaviour. Then first public market introduction (expensive, only top of the line hardware gets it). Then 'standard' phase, when basically every product uses this technology.

Time between stages and kickoff date could be randomized (or for playerstart with special plot set as fixed), Inventor faction could also be randomized between factions (possibly even weighted so that one faction is more likely to achieve this than some other - possibly influenced by other factors like economy, access to specific areas or ressources, ...).
Yes players could be involved through side missions, but it should be a small part of a bigger whole.

The worst possible thing they could do is give the player some basically "Einstein" level genius as access, who then researches everything 'on command' and you do silly busy work to complete the bar.
"I want this" *click* "OK i do 4 fetch missions" *pling* "I have -magic device- that nobody else has ever seen and will never get to see or use either".

[Nikola515]

So, really, it ought to be called "reverse engineering", then...

Not necessarily. Perhaps we will be able to upgrade weapons or any equipment to M2 or M3.... We already know our teleport will work in short ranges and we need to research to extend rage. Perhaps they will do same for weapons,shields or tech ? Start basic and improve it to higher versions (like plasma cannon MK1,MK2 and MK3 in XR) ? Improving marines weapons and armor would be nice too....

[Killjaeden]

So, really, it ought to be called "reverse engineering", then...

Not necessarily.

What Falcrack described is exactly reverse engineering.

[Nikola515]

So, really, it ought to be called "reverse engineering", then...

Not necessarily.

What Falcrack described is exactly reverse engineering.

That would be the case if we would only copy paste. But if we could improve them and have access to tech that NPC don't have that would be different story. For example we could improve ships boost speed 20%. This would be more like perk that reverse engineering. But personally I wouldn't like that idea because it would make player OP... I like it when plainfield is even

Edit: Sorry I didn't see that Raven response was to Falcrack. I though it was to OP and what Egos plans wore to do with X4. But Falcrack idea is brilliant and I would love to see something like that.

[Sparky Sparkycorp]

Wouldnt it be more interesting if new technology would become available in the whole universe, without beeing directly attached to actions of the players? You as the player would witness how the universe changes over time and how this technology goes through its development stages.

Not really, no. People and civilizations are not particularly altruistic in the short term.

Even someone who is actively playing for a couple of thousand hours only experiences a few months of the game. What are they going to experience from other companies in that time? An upgraded com device with additional adware and a re-designed ship flange? Doesn't sound very exciting to me.

I'd rather play a game where the player could be on the cutting edge or try to match un-shared developments in hostile factions than experience a bland space communism.

[UniTrader]

ah, research. an interesting Topic for a game like X where a save can be played for months and not hours or days like other games which have this. i already made some extensive thoughts on how this could work for a mod i wanted to do (which failed on "bugs" related to dynamic upgrades). a Full Explaination of how i envisioned this might be too long, but if there is interest i will share my thoughts

[Falcrack]

So, really, it ought to be called "reverse engineering", then...

Not necessarily.

What Falcrack described is exactly reverse engineering.

That would be the case if we would only copy paste. But if we could improve them and have access to tech that NPC don't have that would be different story. For example we could improve ships boost speed 20%. This would be more like perk that reverse engineering. But personally I wouldn't like that idea because it would make player OP... I like it when plainfield is even

Edit: Sorry I didn't see that Raven response was to Falcrack. I though it was to OP and what Egos plans wore to do with X4. But Falcrack idea is brilliant and I would love to see something like that.

Well then play X3 with the LU + Mayhem mod. I'm doing that right now, it is an awesome mod.

[RAVEN.myst]

I am not a fan of the research thing either. Its just seems so backwards and gamey that somehow the player with his small tiny company somehow is involved/ is the leader in development of revolutionary technology.
It is like an overused trope in scifi games. You are the player, and because you are the player you get all the prototypes and every super-scientist-genius (who in 90% is always alone and independant of every faction, broke on cash and without any help) somehow needs your help in completing research on never seen before technology.

It just crashes the suspension of disbelief wall at this point for me, because pretty much every scifi game seems to have it.

In a true 4X or such, it makes sense: the player represents and is backed by the full might of a faction such as a nation or species. But in what essentially boils down to a "rags to riches" story, I agree - it's very implausible, downright unrealistic.

To me, as an amateur (ie. I'm no expert!) student of the history of science, one of the most salient characteristics of scientific/technlogical progress is that as its sophistication/advancement increases, the difficulty/cost of attaining it increases exponentially. Long gone are the days of the single 'genius' thinker or innovator (be it a scientist such as Galileo or Newton or Einstein or the many luminaries of the classical world, or an inventor such as Edison and the like) making breakthroughs on their own. Today, it is all about major laboratories with MASSIVE funding behind them, and even more massive amounts of number-crunching - that is what "research" is all about these days, and there are fewer and fewer names that stand out in the same manner as, say, Einstein or Maxwell or Darwin, especially relative to the total population of the world. Research team leaders nowadays provide direction, but very seldom are they having true dazzling insights, "eureka" moments. In short, research is increasingly about perspiration, rather than inspiration, and it is conducted by powerful computer networks crunching mind-boggling amounts of data (SETI/Folding@home, anyone? The exoplanets search collaborative project, whatever it's called, anyone?), distilling trends, and then that being interpreted by teams of people with large corporations paying their salaries and operating costs.

The worst possible thing they could do is give the player some basically "Einstein" level genius as access, who then researches everything 'on command' and you do silly busy work to complete the bar.
"I want this" *click* "OK i do 4 fetch missions" *pling* "I have -magic device- that nobody else has ever seen and will never get to see or use either".

Perhaps a more believable way to implement this sort of dynamic, if strongly desired, might be more focused on "rediscovery" rather than innovation: the player pokes around in obscure, abandoned sites in the manner of an archaeologist of sorts, and if/when lucky enough to retrieve a technological relic (abandoned by an advanced race, or surviving its passing), can then have an "unconventional", perhaps rogue scientist whose work is perhaps banned, look into getting it to work again. However, even in this scenario, I would think that the resources of an entire nation (or equivalent thereof) would still be covering more ground and therefore be more likely to unearth such artifacts. The state-sponsored Hedion University or University of Caille (oops! Wrong game! ) would have far more manpower and walletpower to throw at any labour-intensive project than even the most enterprising of private individuals (and before anyone mentions PR-whores such as Sir Richard and the like: A. vast financial resources not even available to 99%+ of "one-percenters", and B. still not a patch, not by a long shot, on the likes of NASA and such, in terms of scope and chances of actually accomplishing anything of consequence, no matter what their hype engines may try to persuade us to the contrary!)


TLDR: No Earth-shaking revolutionary breakthroughs are being achieved in kitchens or garages, anymore - it's all about ever-larger collaborations, backed by ever deeper resource pools. Even when a single mind comes up with a hypothesis, a single man or woman can no longer test that hypothesis in order to develop it into a functional theory, far less build something that works out of it. I expect this trend to continue, barring some breakthrough that turns it on its head, but even then: let's imagine that a hand-held and cheap hypercomputer is invented, allowing private individuals to process data on massive scales - unless that computer provides *literally unlimited* scalability at NO extra cost, all it would mean would be that corporations/governments would buy huge numbers of them, thus retaining an overwhelming advantage. I think it would take nothing less than an equally cheap matter-energy-equivalence converter ("replicator") and essentially free access to virtually unlimited amounts of energy, in order to level that playing field.

[ZaphodBeeblebrox]

Somtimes, things do get through that are not the result of huge collaboration
and expenditure.

Graphene:

Single layer of carbon atoms.

Created using Sellotape and a pencil.

Result revolutionary new material.

[RAVEN.myst]

Somtimes, things do get through that are not the result of huge collaboration
and expenditure.

Graphene:

Single layer of carbon atoms.

Created using Sellotape and a pencil.

Result revolutionary new material.

Indeed, occasionally such things do happen (and I *really* should stick to my usual policy of avoiding absolute terms such as "never"! heheh.) But such exceptions are becoming ever more rare. Also, graphene is certainly interesting and will no doubt end up having significant, powerful applications, but "revolutionary"? That remains to be seen, but until then I certainly wouldn't put it next to Newton's Laws of Motion, or Rutherford's , Eratosthenes's, Curie's, Galileo's, Pasteur's, Darwin's, Tesla's, Aristotle's, or other such luminaries' works, which underlie even our daily lives in profound and widespread ways. "Revolutionary" is a very relative, context-dependent term (so, in fact, I should avoid using it, myself, heheheh)

My point, however, (which I may not have been clear about) is that while in ages past individual insights accounted for much (perhaps even the majority) of total advancement, today they contribute only a miniscule portion. While from a "romantic" perspective this may seem a sad thing, it is a simple consequence of the fact that the basic fundamentals have pretty much all been figured out by now, with that which is still unknown to us requiring ever more difficult (and expensive) techniques and equipment to allow us to see farther, deeper, smaller, faster.

[Killjaeden]

Result revolutionary new material.

No, the result was not a revolutionary material ready for use. It was a proof that it could be extracted and that these 2D layers can be stable. Yes this proof is revolutionary. However, it is not technological. You can't today just buy a bunch of graphene in a hardware store and do stuff with it, or buy products that utilize the discovered properties of graphene. Novoselov and Geim could never make a supercomputer, superchip or whatever other application it might have in their little "friday play session". This breakthrough in research is nothing but a single step of many on the implementation to technology that uses graphene. To fully utilise the discovery and to produce it you need collaboration and high expenditure (EU alone poured 1 billion € into research projects on graphene in 2013)
This is precisely the reason why graphene is not used outside of prototypes and research labs yet. This is the difference between game and reality. "Research" in games yields something you can either use or improves whatever you are already using.

[Silla]

Unless we know what this is about ..it is a lot of speculation going on. But I have to agree that a feature that isn't properly thought through as mechanic ...will just look strange. Blueprints could also be acquired through payment or missions or somehow. Those links it to areas that are better developed instead of an potentially not well fleshed out feature like scanning as it was in XR.
Same applies to crafting in XR. I always found it a little cheesy to craft stuff from my infinit inventory without tools or expertise and having just a hand full of items to craft when it comes to weapon mods.I think a feature always needs to have a certain depth to it to have something to discover over some time to keep one interested and must be enjoyable to be not off putting. Otherwise it is just a gimmick...

[JSDD]

... whats the point of all this ?

... it could be an interesting feature, it keeps the details of the game dynamic:

lets say equipment docks / shipyards / other station "modules" can do R&D, can improve the shield capacity / regeneration / efficiency with a certain percentage. the station (module) (or race) stores all the technologies locally, that means only shields bought from there will have this tech available. other station (or races) wont have it. after some period of time (randomly, after it has been discovered by others / finished) the technology will become publicly availabe, meaning all stations (or races) have access to it. which means that YOU have to do R&D yourself if you want to stay ahead of your adversaries. to be able to research on arbitrary features (of arbitrary tech items [max shield strength, weapon energy consumption, other %ages]) all the technology wont be named in any way, you just order your EQDock to

Code: Select all

--> research ...
----> weapons ... [select weapon]
------> energy efficiency ...
--------> dedicated budget: [user input]

the game then does:

Code: Select all

--> calculating time duration to finish
--> calculating percentage to optimize
--> waits ... a bit (keeps you informed about the progress made)
--> updates the locally stored "tech state"

the "tech state" can be viewed as "TShips" from X3 games, but stored locally on each EQDock / shipyard / R&D station module.

for each researchable topic, a global table registers each researched technology made by everyone (race / R&D station / etc ..). once the playtime passes the timeput of a technology, this tech will be made publicly available.

what to do if you are researching on a topic that was finished but NOT isnt already public ?

... i dont know, maybe .. you just wasted money thats the "risk" of trying to be ahead of your opponents.

whats with components that existed before te new tech that improves it ? (e.g. max shield strength of shield type xyz)

... they wont have it ... but you can easily exchange them in your local recycle store / EQDock / 2nd hand shop / whereever ...


i think thats not that difficult to realize in X4 (unless the game uses ready-made global list to lookup all the values of every laser / shield that exists in the game .. like TBullets TShields in X3 etc ..)

[Nikola515]

So, really, it ought to be called "reverse engineering", then...

Not necessarily.

What Falcrack described is exactly reverse engineering.

That would be the case if we would only copy paste. But if we could improve them and have access to tech that NPC don't have that would be different story. For example we could improve ships boost speed 20%. This would be more like perk that reverse engineering. But personally I wouldn't like that idea because it would make player OP... I like it when plainfield is even

Edit: Sorry I didn't see that Raven response was to Falcrack. I though it was to OP and what Egos plans wore to do with X4. But Falcrack idea is brilliant and I would love to see something like that.

Well then play X3 with the LU + Mayhem mod. I'm doing that right now, it is an awesome mod.

I definitely will