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# System prepended metadata

title: Technology

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# Technology

## Tech Cards
Every technology is also referred to as a "tech card". This is in the sense that each nation draws a number of cards (to be decided between 3 and 6) from a "deck" of possible technologies, in a manner similar to Stellaris. Every time a technology is completed, the card drawn in its place is refreshed. Technology cards are also refreshed every year - such that a country which is unsatisfied with its current options may instead wait for better ones to arrive, although doing so may put them at a slight disadvantage with regards to era progression.

Techs have prerequisites to being developed, generally dependent on having other technologies developed, although certain other prerequisites may be implemented. For example, certain technologies may require you have certain buildings built or certain space assets.

The chance a card is drawn from the pile is not equal. Certain cards have a higher base weight assigned to them, meaning they are more likely to be drawn. For instance, agricultural advancements are likely to arise in most any nation - and as such most everyone is going to see them. On the other hand, extremely specific technologies are far less likely to appear to a country - think of them as opportunities, some crazy researcher coming up with some crazy superweapon or new invention. If you tell them no, within a year they'll be pursuing their lifelong dream of building rocket-powered toy crocodiles instead.

The chance is also modified by other soft factors. For instance, certain buildings increase the likelihood of certain tech categories being drawn, for example naval buildings may increase the chance of getting naval technologies, having more space infrastructure will increase the likelihood of associated military and civilian technologies etc.

A non-exhaustive selection of categories techs can be part of:

- **Common** (See Eras)
- **Military**
- **Industrial**
- **Civilian**
- **Espionage**
- **Naval**
- **Air Power**
- **Rocketry**
- **Nuclear**
- **Superweapon**

Additional technology cards may also be available based on player actions and events, which are not subject to the drawing and redrawing of other cards.

Once a certain number of techs have been researched in a year, further development becomes impossible (similar to the increment cap in KSPRP-0).

Alternative rule: Tech decks are only drawn once a year. This would slow down the progress of technology.

## Eras
In KSPRP One, technologies are spread across 'eras' roughly equivalent to the tech levels in KSPRP-0. These eras are rough barriers to getting something very advanced really early on by investing your entire GDP into it. As a reference, this system is roughly equivalent to the way tech costs work in Victoria 3.

The effect of eras is the following. Each nation starts in the first era. Nations progress from an era to the next by developing all of the **Common** technologies in their current era. Technologies from previous eras are 25% cheaper to develop, while technologies from the next era (the only one higher than the current one you can draw from) are 2 to 3 times as expensive. The additional cost is reduced by the percentage of technologies from the current era that have been developed. Additionally, technologies from the next era are pulled slightly more rarely.


## Research vs Development
Researching something is not sufficient to deploy it. Certain technologies, tagged as "Experimental", cannot be deployed as soon as they are developed. These technologies require potentially destructive testing, often repeated. The blueprint for this is the manner in which nuclear weapons and rockets in KSPRP-0 had a decreasing chance of failure the more they were tested. In a similar manner, developing a cruise missile requires extensive testing, and the faster you want to do it the more likely you are to have failures and have to try again. Unlike KSPRP-0, I propose every failure creates a project which must be completed, as your engineers take a while to process the data from previous failures. This project is 2x cheaper than retesting and takes 2x longer to complete, but is more vulnerable to espionage. Deploying a technology which has not been fully developed incurs a failure risk similar to testing, but without the benefit of a success and without the availability of a retest.

Development table

| Number of successes | Failure Chance |
| -------- | -------- |
| 0     | 50%     |
| 1     | 25%     |
| 2     | 10%     |
| 3     | 5%     |
| 4     | 1%     |

Once a certain number of successes (dependent on the tech) have been achieved, the development is completed. Certain technologies may start with a certain number of "base" successes. Certain technologies may also only count a single "development success" once every N actual successes, for particularly difficult to implement technologies.

The cost of developing a technology is not necessarily the cost of its deployment. In the case of developing warplanes, for example, development may refer to testing components of a next gen jet fighter. This cost may be half of the developed plane, equal to it, or larger (VERY project dependent).

It may be possible for a country to license a project they've developed to a country with the prerequisite technologies researched. Licensing has a starting cost.


## Espionage
Main article: [Espionage](https://hackmd.io/366h41xwThihDib3nlHLZA?view)

The greatest risk in research and development are other players. Your rivals will desire to know what you're up to, try to steal what you know and sabotage your projects. Failure to do sufficient counterespionage will result in your nuclear reactors being Stuxnet'd or your rockets mysteriously having a small component fly out and destroy their engine.

Besides this, espionage allows you to "steal" researched cards (initially, an additional 50% cost is applied, but this may be reduced with more espionage). Not only that, but certain cards have "counter" cards assigned to them. In such cases, revealing an enemy has researched (if not developed) something powerful - for example, potent ballistic shields - may cause you to permanently reveal one of its counters at normal cost - for example, hypersonic missiles.

## Handling proposals

One of the most fun parts of KSPRP is, in my opinion, the cold war technological one-up-manship that happens between nations. In KSPRP-0, the main way to introduce a technology was to talk to a GM and then you would get a personalized quote for its cost and effects. Unfortunately, this led to a situation where GMs might give different numbers to different people, or secret projects might be developed and no one would ever know about them because they were never deployed - and they just didn't think of it.

Instead, secret project proposals would be worked into the normal tech tree, with only an increased chance for the proponent. At the start of the RP, such projects would be linked into the tech tree themselves, after some rational numbers were worked out for them. Once the RP starts, however, people may still make new proposals through the web app. These proposals would go to one to three GMs to be judged, and once judged to be appropriate (and not redundant) they would be assigned their own place in the tech tree, and the proponent would permanently get the relevant tech as an additional card they can research once they meet the prerequisites.

## Catching up

Whenever a certain era is reached by a country, a stacking 5% cost reduction is applied to technologies in the previous eras up to a maximum 25% cost reduction from this source.

## Example technologies
| Tech | Era | Tags | Cost (IP) | Experimental |
| -------- | -------- | -------- | -------- | -------- |
**National Road Networks** | Era 1| Common, Civilian| 20 | No
**Military Black Sites** | Era 2| Common, Military| 20 | No
**Computer Numerical Control** | Era 3 | Common, Industrial | 50 | No
**Nuclear Weapons** | Era 3| Common, Military, Nuclear, Superweapon| 50 | Yes (x5 success multiplier)
**Missile Silos** | Era 3 | Common, Military | 30 | No
**Mobile Missile Platforms** | Era 3 | Common, Military | 30 | No
**Nuclear Propulsion** | Era 3 | Nuclear, Military | 60 | Yes
**Integrated Circuits** | Era 4 | Industrial | 100 | Yes
**Nuclear Aircraft Carriers** | Era 4 | Military, Superweapon, Nuclear, Air Power | 80 | Yes
**Advanced Personal Computers** | Era 5 | Common, Civilian, Industrial | 
**Fusion Reactors** | Era 6 | Common, Industrial | 120 | Yes

Certain technologies might not have prerequisites in other technologies, but instead require resources from other technologies. For example, Personal Computers do not require Integrated Circuits to be discovered - but the buildings created from them do require products which can only be built with the Integrated Circuits technology. This means certain rarer technologies might cause small cases of monopolies or duopolies. 