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A more intuitive tech tree

CaptainKipard
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kcs123

kcs123

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Great progress on that new tech tree, only drawback is that is hard to track down where starting tech node is placed.

If it is possible, maybe to change icon color for starting root science node, just for easier understanding how other nodes are connected together and what are all dependencies starting from basic node ?

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sherkaner

sherkaner

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Great progress on that new tech tree, only drawback is that is hard to track down where starting tech node is placed.

If it is possible, maybe to change icon color for starting root science node, just for easier understanding how other nodes are connected together and what are all dependencies starting from basic node ?

There is no single starting tech node (and fortunately the system doesn't require one). The concept here is that there are several areas of technology that you can invest in right from the start of the game. Given the way KSP draws tech trees, I decided not to do the actual radial "explosion" format, but a more traditional left-to-right format, but the concept is the same. You'll see that icons tend to move horizontally, representing classes of technology. At the start of the game, as Kipard said, you have a bunch of starting nodes -- everything in the first column on the left. So I think you'd either give the player some initial science and let them choose their starting parts, or else just give the player the entire first column.

No way of me changing the colors.

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kcs123

kcs123

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There is no single starting tech node (and fortunately the system doesn't require one). The concept here is that there are several areas of technology that you can invest in right from the start of the game. Given the way KSP draws tech trees, I decided not to do the actual radial "explosion" format, but a more traditional left-to-right format, but the concept is the same. You'll see that icons tend to move horizontally, representing classes of technology. At the start of the game, as Kipard said, you have a bunch of starting nodes -- everything in the first column on the left. So I think you'd either give the player some initial science and let them choose their starting parts, or else just give the player the entire first column.

No way of me changing the colors.

Thanks for reply, it have more sense now.

Then it is better to unlock few "essential" nodes at start then give player science points. Someone new to KSP could spend points in one "tree", leaving him without enough points for parts needed to complete starting contracts and earning new science points. Those starting nodes should not have much parts, but should serves as starting points to give better clue how new tech tree system works.

Either way, your tech tree looks much better then existing vanilla science tree.

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kookoo_gr

kookoo_gr

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Okay, version 2 of the per-part tech tree:

http://i.imgur.com/5PKkHI3.png

I think I worked in nearly all of the suggestions made, as well as some other tweaks and fixes. I even took at shot at the wings, although it still feels pretty bogus -- at least it's something though. I'm going to start trying to beat this into a .cfg file -- I'm pretty hyped to actually play this.

i was going to make a similar diagram to yours but real life canceled my version.

my two cents in the tech tree are the following

1. the probe cores should progress according to their symmetry just like the symmetry is at the VAB, of course the abilities should be changed accordingly, eg. stayputnik, probobodyne qbe, probobodyne hecs, probobodyne okto, probobodyne okto2, rc-001s, rc-l01, Mk2 drone core

2. for the energy i would place the pb-nuk at level 3

3. for science i would go for thermometer and barometer at level 1. at level 2 mystery goo, seismometer, sensor nose cone and at level 3 science jr. science lab, gravioli detector

hope the tech tree gets a re-haul because right now it makes career mode wonky and a bit annoying for some contracts

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CaptainKipard

CaptainKipard

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1. the probe cores should progress according to their symmetry just like the symmetry is at the VAB, of course the abilities should be changed accordingly, eg. stayputnik, probobodyne qbe, probobodyne hecs, probobodyne okto, probobodyne okto2, rc-001s, rc-l01, Mk2 drone core

Why?

10char

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sherkaner

sherkaner

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i was going to make a similar diagram to yours but real life canceled my version.

my two cents in the tech tree are the following

1. the probe cores should progress according to their symmetry just like the symmetry is at the VAB, of course the abilities should be changed accordingly, eg. stayputnik, probobodyne qbe, probobodyne hecs, probobodyne okto, probobodyne okto2, rc-001s, rc-l01, Mk2 drone core

2. for the energy i would place the pb-nuk at level 3

3. for science i would go for thermometer and barometer at level 1. at level 2 mystery goo, seismometer, sensor nose cone and at level 3 science jr. science lab, gravioli detector

hope the tech tree gets a re-haul because right now it makes career mode wonky and a bit annoying for some contracts

WRT #1 and #3, I might possibly agree with you if, as you say, the parts themselves were rebalanced. However my point in this exercise is showing that even without a part rebalance, we can create a sensible tree that I think would be an enormous improvement over what we have. This is particularly true for the modded tree I'm working on, since we'll actually be able to play it now with the parts we have. Certainly the tree could be even further improved with tweaked and supplemented parts, but I think it's too easy to get bogged down in thinking that if it's not perfect then there's no reason to do anything.

On #2, eh, I disagree. In reality it's actually a quite old technology and fairly simple -- it's not a nuclear reactor, just a device that uses the heat of radioactive decay to generate electricity. Gameplay wise, I don't think it's too overpowered for level 2 as it definitely has strong tradeoffs: it's heavy, expensive, and produces quite little electricity. I like giving people the option of seeing what they can do with that earlier rather than later.

Edited by sherkaner
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Baythan

Baythan

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I think it's best to base the tree off the parts as they are now. We have no way of knowing whether Squad will modify parts, and I don't think modifying parts should be part of this initiative.

Agreed. Once there is a tree we like, if the parts get modified, just switch them around a bit to rebalance the tree.

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sherkaner

sherkaner

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Gahh!!

So I was working along, about 90% done, and ran into a big damn problem:

WotjhWo.png

That's an image of my tech tree, shown within the full extents of what I just realized is a FIXED tech tree canvas area in KSP. You'll notice that I'm up against the bottom edge, and nearly the top edge. That means I can't add more "rows" to the tree -- and I need about a dozen or so more to complete it.

I could flip half of the tree around so it goes to the left where I have lots of room, but due to the hacky way in which these have to be created, that literally means redoing that half of the tree virtually from scratch. That's not very appealing, given that I've got something like 50 hours in this so far. Plus it feels a little ugly to have half the tree going right and half left.

I'm thinking I may post up the dev thread on this, even not complete, and try to get some attention from... somebody who can help here. Ideally I would just be able to increase the canvas area by a bit -- the best would be if I could simply specify the canvas size within the configuration file itself. No idea of the TM mod developer can do that, or if it would have to be Squad. But unless something happens, this may put a damper on finishing this.

I can't tell you how exasperating this is.

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sherkaner

sherkaner

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Would it not have worked better to construct that vertically? (As in, actually make it look like a tech "tree"?)

In retrospect, given the much-wider-than-tall canvas, yes actually that's a quite good idea I hadn't considered. That still involves me rebuilding much of this, but maybe I can work up the motivation to do that. Ugh. Thanks, but ugh. :P

By the way, do you think a descending or ascending tree would be more natural if I go this way? I tend to think descending for some reason, but I don't know if there's some gaming convention that I'm not aware of.

Edited by sherkaner
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CaptainKipard

CaptainKipard

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Although I suspect that this kind of tree will greatly reduce the need for it, the devs could also give us an easy-to-use in-game tree editor.

- - - Updated - - -

Wanderfound gave me the permission to take ownership of the thread. I've posted the summary so far in the OP, and added Sherkaners image to it.

Sherkaner don't delete it plz. If you're going to change it, let me know.

- - - Updated - - -

The OP has been updated with more points discussed since the last summary.

Edited by Cpt. Kipard
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sherkaner

sherkaner

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Although I suspect that this kind of tree will greatly reduce the need for it, the devs could also give us an easy-to-use in-game tree editor.

- - - Updated - - -

Wanderfound gave me the permission to take ownership of the thread. I've posted the summary so far in the OP, and added Sherkaners image to it.

Sherkaner don't delete it plz. If you're going to change it, let me know.

- - - Updated - - -

The OP has been updated with more points discussed since the last summary.

Awesome.

No, I'm planning on leaving all the images I've posted in this thread up on imgur indefinitely.

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