Removes all blocks from research

[rbertoche]

it seems pretty self explanatory
cheers
edit:
I left code that won't get executed after the return to reduce contact area for merge conflicts which kdiff3 won't autosolve

[EmmaFaith]

Well i dont think this is necessary for frontier at all, because you can literally make multiple RD servers from chip vend that we have on frontier station, it will cause issues like people powergaming way too hard with combination of every tier 3 loot. and i think not every person should be able to do EVERYTHING that they want, so they will interreact/roleplay with other people to get their other needs. via trade/piracy etc.

if something we need, private RD servers that not everyone can benefit except the ship that carries it, because currently researching is not profittable "trading" way, only from the artifact sales.

[Cheackraze]

yea im kind of either or on this one tbh. On one hand, if you're in it for some deep science gameplay, probably frustrating if you hit the 2-3 hour mark and have to start over with the rng system. On the other hand, it does encourage specializing and focusing your research still and actually having a plan/strategy about what you might want to focus on and unlock to make money selling or using etc. Im not directly opposed but maybe we should do like some kind of more visible community poll of the scientists to see what they think. I would still like them to be restricted on a per-grid basis no matter what so that scientists could sell servers to people for example.

[github-actions]

This pull request has conflicts, please resolve those before we can evaluate the pull request.

[rbertoche]

Sorry for not replying to this earlier.
My main reason behind this change is: The whole idea of having a "main" branch is presented in game as if it were something you had achieved, and the way it is presented it reads at least to me personally as if it were a good thing, to have a "main branch" at your RD server. But in practice, this was nothing more than a block towards the other tech. I just noticed I lost this change locally when I merged with frontier again.
Maybe a poll was indeed a great idea anyway, I have done this on my codebases also due to players supporting it. What's better, to foster having more servers/and/or more research ships, or just make research more available and easier to everyone, even the Pioneer captain Research Director?
As long as having a main branch entails no advantages I would still personally prefer an unblocked RD server.
Also now with grid restricted RD servers, the whole game is way more interesting to play as science!

[dvir001]

If were doing this change we should also consider having servers take power per unlocked tech and not just flat % to make it fair.

[dvir001]

Closing this as this has gone stale, feel free to reopen in the future as we doing some sci reworks later after the upstream update.

[rbertoche]

How do I reopen?
I would love to push more for this since it's a clear improvement with little to no compromise as far as I can see.
I strongly disagree with this "feature" as explained before due to it adding absolutely nothing to R&D gameplay other than a research block, I fail to see how having a lot of research data stored in the server would cause more power usage or be power gaming and would be glad if someone pointed an actual advantage to the limitations, like Checkraze saying it pushes players to planning stuff ahead, which kinda makes sense but it's a very weak point still to justify having to build up to 4 of the same thing with no benefit if you wanted to unlock it all, plus the user experience cost of having to shift servers in the lathes - again with no benefit from this action.

As an unrelated side note I would probably also consider using whatever comes out of new R&D in Frontier in our Pirata codebase, which is not frontier-PT, so it's very in my interest to make sure frontier reasearch doesn't have this quite arbitrary limitation IMO.

Cheers

[rbertoche]

It's also worth noting that with the "lottery" type of research unlocking, where you only have 1 option of research to unlock for each field, you can get a slim benefit of a "reroll" of the research slots by researching something from a tree which isn't the one you're focusing right now. But if you have T3 blocks and you ever want T3 of that other tree, then doing that would waste the research points, since you're going to want to have a whole new RD server for that other tree and might unlock that same tech again there

[GreaseMonk]

Hiya, swooping in on this old PR 😆

But in practice, this was nothing more than a block towards the other tech.

• A block that cost spesos
• Takes up space in your shuttle
• Takes part of your shuttle's powergrid
• A piece of circuit that has to be planned and not be forgotten at start of journeys

The RD server was designed so that each server has their own specialization.
You want one RD server to be able to handle all specializations.
This PR completely disables forementioned gameplay that is stereotypical for SS14.

I see your point of view, i really do, but it's not that big of a deal to just buy some extra circuits.

My vote is to not merge, but feel free to put this on your fork ofcourse!

[Cheackraze]

sure lets try it why not, ive always been 50/50 on this if its needed or not because of how long are rounds are anyway.

[rbertoche]

Nice!
As a response to GreaseMonk's comment, I can appreciate that limitations can be interesting to the gameplay sometimes. But in this case it just seems to be a mechanic which gives the user trouble with no reward to compensate it. If unlocking T3 by itself and getting a "Main branch" had any meaningful benefit to users, I might not consider this change.

[GreaseMonk]

Fair enough, well , now that xenoarcheology has become a little more harder i think after all this may just be a nice compensation