I am wondering if we are reaching in some areas the "final" tech, because there is a large deviation from the pattern; each tech up in the same series would be a fixed amount, then the next level would be a larger but fixed amount for each additional space... both of these in the final tech series jump dramatically at the end in terms of efficiency outside the normal pattern.

I mean, it kind of has to. 3 of the new reactors should probably supply about 300 energy more than the previously best reactors. That is the equivalent of 50 rescued prisoners' worth of engineers. With equal amounts of research and artifact production, you will achieve the same feat in half the time and it won't require a whole third resource, minerals, to support it's upkeep. That, and artifacts serve a kajillion other purposes and permanently increase everything except cloak, scan and attack at the same time as being flat out better than research. Just because research was the cat's meow early on doesn't mean it wil always be.

A lot of the basic problems I see with people's strategy is that they aren't indefinitely sustainable and people pretend that they are. A lot of it is how people use rank points when I say that... but that has nothing to do with the original post, so uh yeah.

Could you elaborate on that part Spoony about unsustainable strategies? I'm still very small and new and would like to better understand. Perhaps some examples?

Thx!

Ejjakai
The Trust

I think I recall Dan mentioning that they'd change how the newer tiers scale, after many people agreed that Quasi-Chaostatic weapons aren't even worth it.

Well it's exponentially increasing cost, for linear benefit. Rank and minerals define what's affordable, builder helps immensely in keeping upkeep affordable but only select trees are worth maximizing. Last time I calculated (and we are missing a couple new techs in wiki) it was about 10B in upkeep for all tech modules. I sort of agree that AP is going to give you lasting benefits over RP beyond a certain point; lots of RP to get tech, lots of MP to maintain it. Artifacts can boost anything that modules can without that overhead; also, RP -> projects I found out from someone who was doing it, doesn't give a lot of credits. So the endgame is medium mining, and AP as heavy as you can go. You can even at some point dump RP planets or convert to AP and you will get a bunch of androids to do research for you over time instead (except for the fact good AP planets are rarer). Unless RP could be directly converted into mining, you're going to end up with a lot more mining planets to sustain and build the techs. I guess because of that I'd rather have something to still research, but I'm not sure how many I would end up using; generators I like, and weapons, but I can deal with having less than maximal of the rest.

The original question though is whether the pattern indicates the end of the tech tree or if the efficiency is going to start increasing rapidly; that might change things.