I only wish i could queue the research.
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You can only queue research that is available to you at that moment. You can’t queue the ones that haven’t been unlocked since they’re not visible. (which is good because that would be confusing have both available and unavailable research visible). That’s why the tree is the best, you could see instantly which research you need, which ones you don’t have. It would probably have to take you to another screen cos it’s so big.
But you could have separate trees for each category.
Dude… i know
Yeah, I was just making it clear to whoever is reading this, and to put the rest of my post on context.
I really wish the research tree was a tree, and not tabs.
This is especially needed to fix up HW1s research to require ions for destroyers.
Give me one page where each tech is a square with an icon. 
And the ones you can’t researched greyed out with their prereqs like needing a production facility listed…
It’s really really bad.
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Just give us back HW 1 research, that would be great.
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I agree, it’s very messy.
I much preferred the ability to spread research across multiple research ships or have them work together as an when you wanted. In that respect I wish we had kept the old HW research method, just with a face lift to improve the UI aspect.
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Yes! Bring back parallel research queues. And the ability to assign multiple research ships to one job to speed things up!
Research tree diagram.
Tree-shaped research diagram that is a HUD overlay. Click on a particular leaf/branch of the tree and it will automatically research everything up to that point without needing to go back to the tech tree - until it’s done - which it then says so, and maybe even gives a prompt to select a new technology ‘destination’ so to speak.
Let’s pretend I’m using a HW1 race and I want to research Destroyers. Can the system you propose foresee if I want to unlock the frigate path first (for support/assault/ion frigates) or the super-capital path first (for transports)? What if I want to research frigate drive first (support frigates), then frigate chassis (assault frigates), then super capital ship drive (transports, I need one more… for wathever purpose), then ion technology (ion frigates), then at last super capital chassis?
It may pick a standard route if you don’t care, or you can click-and-drag along the particular route you want to take. Or try and prioritize sections.
Example 1: I want to hit Super Capital Chasis as fast as possible. So I just click on that bubble in the research tree. It will pick the fastest route possible, regardless of how many things needs to be research. The emphasis is on TIME.
Example 2: I want to hit Super Capital Chasis as fast as possible, but I want a particular something along the way. There could be a simple feature to click-and-drag along the path you want.
Example 3: Those who don’t want the automization of research can just click on one at a time and wait for it to complete.
Example 4: Super Capital Chasis. That’s priority. But I also need Gravity Wells! Simple left-click for Priority 1. Then select Gravity Well for Priority 2 with a right-click. It researches Priority 1 first. Once completed, it begins to work toward Priority 2. Both instances being capable of re-routing your research before you begin, or during ongoing progress.
This idea gives real credit to the phrase ‘Tech Tree’ in RTS games. It also allows you to SEE how much of the whole tree you have researched. It gives an idea of how far you have to go so people can gauge their status better rather than having to memorize the entire tech tree and know ‘how far’ something is away from where you are. AS things research, there could be a blue progress bar along the branches of the tree towards something so you can watch it go.
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It’s never just a tree, is it? Things have multiple prerequisities, so they branch out as much as converge.
And mods, they have even more prerequisities and research, so your “tree” would have to be dynamic, or at the very least editable.
The resulting “tree diagram” is more of a net with overlapping threads all over it.
Don’t get me wrong, it would be nice. Just not as simple as you imagine.
I have a feeling it would look more like the London Underground map
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Tech trees not made with it in mind originally can be pretty tricky to cleanly lay out visually. The HW:@ tech trees are a decent example of that (UNH, Vay, FRN). A manual layout would likely be needed instead of automatic, which is a bit of an extra burden for modding/tweaking the game. But the functionality described is not uncommon for 4x games, so obviously it’s fairly doable. Auto-research might be a bit tricky given the fact that research isn’t free here, but we already have pause buttons so not a big deal.
No offence, but your manual layout isn’t exactly the clearest informational thing either. 
I would go with automatic arrangement, but each time you would select something, the irrelevent unconnected things would gray out. So no matter what item on the techtree you would be looking at, you would see in color only the converging web of its prerequisities and a tree of the things it unlocks. I think that would be clear and neat.
[quote=“Pouk, post:22, topic:216277”]
No offence, but your manual layout isn’t exactly the clearest informational thing either.
[/quote] That’s actually my point, as those layouts are actually automatic. I made a lot of small tweaks to try to ‘jiggle’ the layout into something more readable, you should have seen the initial versions. But yes, that sort of visual filtering would help a lot.
Right, I didn’t think this version you’ve shown was automatic. OK.
Still I imagine there’d be some diagonal lines? That would make it more readable.
I like this idea. If I want to rush to destroyers just let me select them and the game can then just research everything necessary for it. Let me pause, as usual, and we’re golden.
Or let me queue deeper upgrades if I research their prereqs.
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Or let me queue deeper upgrades if I queue their prereqs.
I’m totally in favor of this, so you could mantain control of the research order while queuing deeper researches (maybe making these in a different color). Still, if I delete a prereq research, only the researches that come later in the queue and depend on the deleted research would have to be automatically deleted from the queue. Or at least those later researches would have to “magically disappear” from the queue, without completion of course, when it’s their turn to be researched.
But at this stage of the upcoming patch… if the devs have not thought of this on their own, I think we’re not going to see it. After all, compared to things like rewriting the whole movement code, I can see why this is a low priority thing.
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