Ahoy all,

We need to assemble a list of technologies that players will be able to research in their academies. Academies will not make it into the first release of the Hideout and they will be added after Banks and most probably -also- after Ship Specialization


Academy

The academy can only be build in the player's hideout. It is where the scholars meet and research new technologies. The greater its level, the more scholars can be hosted and the bigger their libraries and experimental rooms will be. This allows them to research more difficult technologies and in greater speed.

Technologies concept

• Technologies should be percentage bonuses.
Slowly and tidy, all percentage bonuses in the game should be removed or limited. The removed percentages should be incorporated into technologies. More percentage bonuses will be invented and added in the game with the technologies. Percentage based technologies could have levels. Finite or infinite.

• Technologies must provide specialization.
Just like ship specialization,there must be added on specialization. This type of specialization should facilitate different playing styles. It is however hard to achieve diverse specialization therefore...

• Technologies must be hard to research
They can include missions for example - in the style of nation missions. They can have social requirements, like country votes. Or special laws. We need ideas here.

• A single player must be unable to research all of them
In fact, he will have to be forced to few choices. We can achieve this by creating chains and by generating special tech points that will be limited. For example, a cap on how many chains a player can take. If we have 5 primary chains for example,a player should be able to select up to three.

• Technologies must be logical.
They must be self-explanatory as most as possible. We will leave the magic part only to voodoo. For technologies, we need accurate names and results. If this means that we will need to incorporate some voodoo card effects to Technologies (and then retire the cards), so be it.

Here is a sample technology list. Just a pre-pre-design. Just random ideas that are nowhere near finalization.

Navigation - Percentage bonus speed to all ships
Magnetism - Unlocks abilities such as 4 port trade routes, number of warehouses, number of merchants, etc.
Metallurgy - Percentage bonus to all ships attack/defense (perhaps directly affecting iron scantling)
Astronomy - Percentage bonus travel time reducement (on top of ship speed as this theoritically improves pathfinding)
Gunpowder - Percentage bonus attack to all ships (perhaps affecting bronze cannon ability too)
Chemistry - This can be used to unlock certain hideout buildings relative to production or their production directly. It can affect ships too but possibly we will use it for the first case.
Physics - This could even affect the type of ships a player can build. A SoL for example must require a lvl 20 Physics (poor newbs I suppose...) in order to build it.
Military Tradition - This can affect military ships to build like Physics and/or affect future foot battle.
Banking - Extra requirement for bankers, it should unlock features. It could also improve some of their rates.
Economics - Trade bonuses - percentage based again.
Assembly Line - It could reduce turns needed to build a ship and/or affect resource producing buildings.
Education - It could further improve tehnology researching speed.
Milling - Allows construction of resource processing units, such us Grain Mills, Liquor workshops, Tobacco Workshops
Mining - Allows construction of ore mines, iron mines, iron mason, stone mason.
Colonization - Allows construction of resource production buildings such as Tobacco Farms, Sugar plantation , Grain etc
Fishing - Improves fishing rate
Pirate Tactics - Every level adds a Skirmish point/day


This is where you can also contribute. Either by reformatiing the above technologies or by proposing new. We would be open to tech ideas that affect turn generation, turn maximum cap and more.

Some piracy bonuses would be nice.

How about:
"Mercantile Piracy" Halves Danger received for attacking fleets containing one or more trading ships.
"Capital Piracy" Double Danger on all danger producing voodoo cards.

"Total Awareness" Player with this ability gets one untraceable free daily spy report of his choosing.
"Port Spy" An addendum is prepared to the daily report showing detailed trade information for one port that must be chosen at the time of completion of the tech.

"Subtlety" Player can move ships without cargo without danger penalty.
"Down Low"" Player cannot be spied, insighted, or crystal balled, ever.
"Lay Low" Player can "disband" one fleet rendering it invisible until the next update. Its danger goes down at twice the normal rate until then.
"Personal Safety" Player may designate one ship as "his" or "hers", that ship (not its fleet, just that ship) can never be captured and is immune from ship based voodoo cards (sabotage, etc).

"Exploit" Daring raids of over 100 attacks in a 24 hour period on a single target shall result in zero fame loss due to counterattacks till the next update.
"Fear and Loathing" Player has a permanent 50% reduction in fame loss.
"Scurge" One a certain fame threshold is reached, the Pirate is deemed a legend and suffers no fame loss whatsoever. However, if a "Scourge" level pirate is reduced to zero ships, half of his fame goes to the player who sinks or captures that ship.

I don't know, just brainstorming a wish list...

wow.. skill-trees.. i like that.

How about skill trees that ultimately lead to Pirate, Merchant, Politician, etc, whichever trade u may want to end up doing. Perhaps tie in each level of the tree with the Players current Nation rank. It will work until u reach Nobility, by then the Player should already have the maximum attributes and at the top of the tree that he/she chose. To change to a different skill tree, Players have to start from Citizen.

A few top-of-the-tech-list thingy i can think of:
Pirate/ Raider
[Stealth Training]
Max Research level:X
For each level researched, allows X% chance that attacks on opponent Players' fleets will not yield Danger penalty.

[Twilight Training]
Max Research level:X
Attacks on opponent Players' fleets between 2300h to 0000h according to system clock will yield half the Danger rating, with X determining the duration or window of raid, and percentage increment of plunder rewards.

Merchant
[Market Research]
Max Research level:X
At each level of research, 1 random port will be made available to Player, where port produce is sold at -X% gold, and 1 random produce is bought at +X% gold.

[Alert Officers]
Max Research level:X
At each level of research, 1 random fleet will pause trade and not be inflicted with Danger when Danger-increasing voodoo is cast on Owner.

Nobility
[Reputation]
Each research level increases the threshold (currently at 5000 gold) at which influence begins to drop after each market update. Random port. Switching Nations resets everything.

Basic
[Personal Mint]
Upgrades give gold discounts to ship building, hiring crew, ship upgrades, etc..

constitution- Increases in boarding skills
weapons training camps- create better wepons
scuba diving- finding sunken treasure
space travel? next game perhaps. Is this game conquerable?

Yes Yes keep us on the seas long enough we will blast into space.

special class sailors- mear men and lasses.

training animals-
breading-
hunting-

Voodoo Master : A tech tree for Shamans to increase the power of voodoo casts.

Areas of potential benefit could be:

Eternal Day : adds a given % for each level attained to the time a cast is active for : so a Hostile Natives could be stretched to 26hrs, for example.

Burning Spear : adds % per level to the chance of casts penetrating a Mindbar, for example.

Oh Fortuna : improves % chance per level for 'coin flip' cards such as death poker, sabotage, etc.

Ambrosia : adds % bonus per level to trade cards cast.

Gods of War : adds % bonus per level to 'battle' cards such as Bless, Drums and so on.

I restructured the items you listing in the first post and grouped them in a way that seems logical to me. I used the idea of %increases for almost everything. There seems to be 6 categories of technology which I think is an excellent number- I think a player should be able to choose a little bit from all 6 categories but if they want to research all technologies in a single category they need to let go of other categories. Also, there MUST be a way to undo researches so that someone can strategically try out different combinations of technologies.

Navigation- for trading or fighting: Detailed Cartography (less % chance to get plundered randomly (not implemented yet)), Wind Advantage (fire cannons first in battle), Advanced Seamanship (%faster fleet movements: partially replace favorable winds which will only stack three times)

Production- for creating resources faster with hideout buildings: Exotic Wood, Advanced Metallurgy (iron and gold), Complex Tools, Pesticides (for cotton & tobacco), Veterinary Medicine (food from livestock), Skilled Labor (gives X turns at the daily update: X is between 1 and 50 based on level of Skilled labor researched), Excess Labor (increases turn cap by X amount based on Excess Labor level [between 1 and 200])

Shipbuilding- for boosting % effect of each individual ship attribute: (Flintlocks +%ATT1)(Carronade Cannons +%ATT2)(Balanced Rudder +%ATT3)(Reinforced Scantling +%ATT4)(Spacious Captain's Quarters +%ATT5)(Reinforced Rigging +%ATT6), [bonuses stick with ships so they can be captured/sold?]

Warfare Tactics- for fighting or defending: crew training (+% to hit), crew readiness (+% to miss), Swarm tactics (+% for "small" ships), Broadsides tactics (+% for "large" ships), Raking cannonfire (+% for fast ships), Leeward Escape (+% to miss for slow ships)

Sciences/Engineering- boost to all other technology categories: EDUCATION (+% technology researching speed), Assembly line (-% turns to build ships), Materials Expertise (+% to get 5 attribute points each ship upgrade), Shipbuilding Efficiency (reduced upgrading resource and gold costs), Advanced Masonry (reduced hideout building resource and gold costs)

Economics- for getting better prices: Officer Contracts (% reduced officer hiring costs), Storage Contracts (% reduced warehouse upgrade costs), Labor Contracts (% reduced hideout building cost), Government Contracts (% increase in port influence gained per gold coin). NOTE: Please (eventually) remove the dutch/english/spanish company cards (they are too simple- the ship types should be different enough to provide their own advantage without a voodoo card to artificially provide advantage).

-Captain D

As much as I hate to say it, I think I like Capt D.'s formatting the best here.

Keep them coming and formatting according on your own needs. If you feel like it, you can create a full list based on other people's proposals too. In the end, I will read through them all and do the same, so we can move on to a final version.

I like what Capt. D said about having so many technologies that you can hold at a time and that you can drop one to get another. There is another game that I played that has it so that you can only get 13 out of a possible 15 upgrades. While I am not proposing that number, I do think that it is good to be strong in some areas and weaker in others.

I will see if I come up with any other technologies to add. I think that it is moving along nicely so far.

yeah, I like the idea of limiting the total number of levels you can gain, also being able to drop one to then gain another if your game focus changes (i.e. sod this trading lark, I wanna go kill things more efficiently!).

The one caveat I would have is not to replace all the voodoo bonuses with techs : this would adversely affect our new players who will take some time to build up enough gold/materials to be even able to build a hide-out, nevermind research the techs. The one leveller they have in a scrap is access to voodoo and it would be a shame to lose that.