The ability to research new technologies was and always will be a central aspect of any space strategy game. Much of the fun in this type of games comes from witnessing the evolution of a society in the long run on all its different aspects: entertainment, culture, life quality, biology, production, governments, communications, materials, propulsion engines, weapons, new types of ships, etc. New technologies unlock new possibilities, new opportunities and new toys to play with. [...]

Predictability and lack of Re-playability

Some games offer simpler and smaller technology trees, others present more complex and diverse research paths. As this is satisfying in the beginning unfortunately soon enough the games start to loose their re-playability since the possible technologies to research are already known from the start and the technology investigation looses its interest. Normally all races have at their disposal the same tech tree to research for and players tend to beeline (focus) on specific technologies that they already know the path to reach for which turns the games very predictable and ultimately boring to replay. [...]

Dynamic and Specialized Research: an Innovative and Realistic approach

It is fine that tech trees can be customized for specific races however I think we did not hit the mark yet. To increase the re-playability and realistic factors a better idea would be to [...]

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Point of discussion for the next generation of Space Strategy Games 4x style (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit and eXterminate)

http://www.spacesector.com/blog