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Aeson -> RE: Optimal technology research paths (5/29/2015 5:42:56 AM)
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In Weapons, I tend to focus on fighters, boarding pods, armor, and one or two chosen weapons (if two, it's usually one long-range and one short-range weapon). I tend to postpone getting ground troop techs and instead favor training up a highly experienced core of infantry (preferably from a species with a decent base troop strength or, better, a troop maintenance discount) by invading independents and perhaps sitting them on planets exposed to frequent pirate raids. Boarding pods tend to drop off my research list as pirates become less of a threat, with focus shifting towards fighters and my chosen weapons.
In Energy and Construction, on a pre-warp start I prefer to get Energy Collectors and then beeline the Bakuras High-Speed Shipyard. Warp Bubbles pop into the research queue as soon as I hit the data archive, but might be delayed until whatever I'm currently working at is completed if the current project is nearly done. After these, I go in for better reactors, better hyperdrives, better maneuvering thrusters, and better drive thrusters (although I'll point out that Ion Thrusters offer better cruise thrust per size unit than Proton Thrusters do when first unlocked, so it's a bit open to debate whether or not Proton Thrusters are better than Ion Thrusters) and bounce around between these for a while, with the occasional diversion to increase ship sizes, mostly focusing on reactors and hyperdrives. Jump inhibition is good to pick up for pirate-hunting squadrons and will continue to be useful later in the game as it helps you prevent targets from escaping once you've caught them; very useful for killing construction ships, somewhat less useful for killing the more powerful reactivated derelicts as the interdiction field gets shut off whenever the ship carrying the device wants to run.
In High Tech, I tend to get Medical and Recreational Facilities, then Transport Systems, then Colonization, then beeline the tech wonders. I sometimes postpone Transport Systems and Colonization until after at least the first tech wonder, as it's not particularly likely that I'll have an immediate use for these; most of the time, you need at least the Warp Bubble Generator and probably the Gerax Hyperdrive before it really becomes reasonable to look for colonies, but I've seen up to three good colony prospects which didn't require more than the basic colonization tech in the home system on a pre-warp start and occasionally founded the first colony or two before obtaining any kind of hyperdrive. It can be a bit of fun, sometimes, to have a miniature empire in your system before you ever manage to get out into the rest of the galaxy, though even for that I greatly prefer having at least Warp Bubbles (I have nevertheless occasionally intentionally delayed Warp Bubbles to have a chance to screw around in the home system with sublight ships; as I said, it can occasionally be fun). After that, I tend to go for Long-Range Scanners (very useful for hunting down pirate construction ships, and also good for locating other pirate ships and bases) and then for the other wonders (which gets me Cloning Facilities as a bonus; Cloning Facilities trump infantry techs almost any day of the week, if you've been using the same set of troops to conquer every independent colony you incorporate into your empire). After that, I'd probably go for countermeasures and targeting and improved fuel/cargo storage.
As for why I generally go for Transport Systems before Colonization? I tend to keep independent colonies fairly prevalent, a troop ship or two is cheaper than a colony ship, and troop transports (and usually the troops they carry) are reusable unless they get caught by pirates, whereas a colony ship is not. Plus, an independent colony will generally grow large enough to become a productive part of the empire sooner than a new colony will, and if they decline my "invitation" to join my empire, I've only lost 5 or 10 infantry units; if they decline to join the empire when I send a colony ship, I lost the entire investment that went into sending the ship. Beyond that, if I have a core of 5 or 10 infantry units that I've been using to conquer independent colonies throughout the early game, they'll be highly experienced and thus quite powerful. Cloning Facilities allow me to recruit infantry which are equal in strength to the strongest infantry unit I currently possess; there's a good chance that that will be one of the experienced units I've been invading independents with, and that that will be beyond what the tech bonuses would allow me to get, although if I've found a colony of a species with a troop upkeep discount, I'd probably prefer to use them as the mainstay of my army.
Something you may not be aware of but which can be rather useful early on is that you can focus your research output into a given area depending on how many labs you provide for each category of research. If you have twice as many Energy Labs as you have Weapons or High Tech labs, your Energy research rate is going to be roughly double that of the Weapons or High Tech research.
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