Fwurg

[Elmer]

I have some questions about the implementation of the Genealogical archives. It is stated that when you research the Genetic Lineage Analysis, you get one of the racial upgrade researches for free.

Now the following questions are:

1. If I buy the research, does this count as finishing my research?
2. When I propose racial upgrade tech for my two races, and they are approved, are they automatically included in the free upgrade part?

[Chriz]

Buying the research does not get you a free racial upgrade.

You will have to research your races yourself for the racial upgrade techs.

[Brend]

Myeah, that construction was a tad weird. It had to do with a revamp of the technology over time. You can see the reasoning behind it in my proposal over there.

It makes for a rather awkward IC position for someone who has the tech, and wishes to sell it. Because everyone can easily just research the tech and get a free species with it, buying the tech doesn't really work because you still need a species to go with it.

2) When I propose racial upgrade tech for my two races, and they are approved, are they automatically included in the free upgrade part?

Yes. You get 1 racial upgrade with the original research, it doesn't matter which one. And your racial upgrade tech (given that it works in exactly the same way as the others) is automatically approved.

[Brend]

After some more thinking, it seems to me that the current 'develop it yourself, and get one for free' approach is actully damaging to cooperation.

Since almost nobody has overlapping races (see the Factions by Race overview: among PCs only humans overlap and only for 2 PCs), this will lead to everyone researching their own tech to get the species they want for free.

Maybe the costs shouldn't be 'Archive 1000 / Upgrade 1000 with a free Upgrade with Archive', but 'Archive 500 / Upgrade 1000 without free Upgrade'. This makes the whole archive +500 more expensive, but it fixes the weird 'two techs for the price of one' quirk. In fact, I'll make a proposal of this right away. We really don't need the quirky setup, and its a bad example for potential tech. writers.

See the Proposal