Background:

I've noticed that virtually everyone has an "ideal" research order that looks something like...

Soil Xenobiology/N-Way Fusion Plants

Isolation Shields/Xenology

Xenotbotany/Arid Epigenetics

Compat Fusion Reactors

Neural Robotics

Nonbaryonic Particles

Similarly, in the mid-game, there's a rush for Pervasive Etching, and late game sees a rush for Persistent Construction. Once a player gets each of the corresponding improvements built, they blast through a huge chunk of the tech tree without ever actually using many of the techs (especially in the Galactic Warfare tree). I'd rather a more measured and balanced approach to research where I actually use 90% of the techs I unlock.



Proposal:

Change Magnetic Field Generators, Graviton-Shielded Laboratories, and Anomalies Institute so that they each provide an absolute or percentage bonus to science based on how many complete research tiers the player has completed. By complete research tier, I mean all techs of a given cost, regardless of where they are in the tech trees. For example:

Magnetic Field Generators provide +10 Science per tier.

Graviton-Shielded Laboratories provide +2.5% Science per tier.

Anomalies Institute provides +4% Science per tier.

These figures look a little low at first, but remember that they continue to scale with additional research, which is offset by the fact that you have to research entire tiers to get the full benefit of these improvements in their revised form.

Really like this idea actually, at least in concept. It would be a good representation of how "fundamentals" carry over to other "branches" of technology. Some of this is reflected in the flavour descriptions of the techs, but they don't have any actual in-game mechanic representation of it.

"Tiers" might be too complicated, given that techs don't have formally defined tiers.



It might be simpler to have that bonus go off the the absolute number of techs known, as the lower tier techs are cheaper. Perhaps chunk them to make the decision more dynamic (I.e. bonus 2.5% for every 5 techs known, rounded down).

That removes the effectiveness of it in promoting "balanced" research though, that just promotes research overall. While they may not be "formal" tiers of research, you can see by the costs of each tech each "step" away from the center is equal no matter which branch it is in (with a few exceptions for special techs, like those at the very end of each tree), those "cost steps" are what he is referring to as the "tiers".