# Death to Techweb [EmoGarbage, Approved]
The R&D techweb is not only a disservice to the creative and fun activities of science, but also a rope, constricting it from evolving past it's limited and basic design.

The system itself prevents science from benefitting from the fruits of their labor. Part of this is inherit to the design and part of this is due to how people have chosen to add to it.

### Issue 1: Worthless Unlocks
Almost every single recipe unlocked through research, with the exception of a few late game science items and power cells, can be found easily on the station in either a department or within the tech vault.

This results in no one ever actually needing to go to science to obtain these items. Even still, it conflicts with the concept of Cargo, since they're both just supplying items that are on-station.

While some exceedingly useful items/machines are still created, there are still easily 80+ recipes that have no use due to being items that can be obtained a variety of other ways.

Having this large variety isn't the biggest issue, however. The real problem is that these items pad out the early parts of the tree. They become obligations to unlocking any actually interesting recipes.

### Issue 2: Repetitive Round Progression
As a result of the techweb being an entirely static structure, player's internally optimize and decide which technologies they see as worth pursuing. Player choice and agency is good, but in this situation, the decisions they make are all going to be identical from round to round, barring extreme conditions (the cloner explodes and another needs to be made).

Players should have to actively think about what decisions are worth making. The choices shouldn't feel laid out in their entirety.

### Issue 3: Failure to Affect Other Departments
By being a system that only scientists really use, R&D is already poised in a position for irrelevance. By failing to create incentives for other departments to want to try and facilitate or engage in it, it becomes only more irrelevant.

Other departments should want to have some input into the research happening. They should be assisting science not out of the goodness of their hearts (lame) but out of an undying desire to get something in return.

We already have systems for generating points that involve other departments (XenoArch, Anomalous Research), but once the points are made, they rarely go on to affect other departments at all.

# The Solution
Oh baby this is what I've been waiting for.

## New Tech
The answer to worthless tech is simple: make tech actual *unlocks*. Instead of giving science the capability to create stuff that already is plentiful, reserve on-station items for tier 1 and make all higher tier items the *actually interesting and fun items to use*.

Things that can be easily gotten on the station (botany tools, machine parts, cables) should either be kept to cargo recipes, vending machines, or static recipes. (you could even do department lathes for the static ones if you feel like it)

Essentially, the new concept going forward is that every unlock, no matter how early in the tree, should be something that is new. Players shouldn't feel like they are slogging through boring shit that they will never actually print. If people *need* to be able to print it, just make it a static recipe.

Additionally, some technologies can contain buffs that affect the whole station, such as greater output from solars or faster scrubber speeds. These can be a neat way to improve station life without having to upgrade manually, like machine upgrades.

## Research Disciplines (Categories, Domains, etc.)
All technologies are categorized into various disciplines. Disciplines are just groups of similar "fields" of tech. They are mostly used for the upcoming tier system of technology (replacing prerequisites).

Essentially, rather than being free to unlock every single tech in existence in just one round, scientists will be encouraged to stay in mostly 1 to 2 different disciplines. This gives replayability to science, as you will have to pick different paths based on what options are made available to you.

There will only be about 3-5 of these categories. They may include:
- Industrial: machinery for production, automation, and creation of materials and power.
- Biochemical: items relating to biological function, including medical equipment
- Experimental: equipment for science subdepartments as well as wacky and bizarre technology
- Militaristic: weaponry and items for offensive purposes.
- Civilian Services: tools and utility items for cleaning and food serving.

### Secret Disciplines
You can unlock secret disciplines by acquiring illegal alien or cult technology. By getting one of these items, the rest of the discipline's technologies become available.

This gives a "scavenger hunt" type gameplay to science, where by seeking out these rare items, you can potentially gain a new form of development for the department.

## Tech Tiers
A major issue of the techweb is how people are forced to unlock tech for no purpose other than to get the next one in line. To prevent this kind of "meta" from forming, we'll instead replace it with loose tiers.

For each category, only the first tier is unlocked. After a certain amount of the tier of the category is researched (50-75%), the next tier in the category is unlocked. This again ties into the concept of investing into disciplines that are worthwhile.

Strict dependencies will still be supported, but they will be used more exclusively. (i.e. unlock **super machine parts** in order to get **ultra machine parts**)

### Tier Lock Out
Once players research into the upper level tiers of a discipline (tier 3 and above, for now), they will be forced to choose a "main path" for the round. Once this is chosen, they will not be able to research any T3 or above tech outside of the path that was chosen.

This adds simply another layer of finality that can be used to gate extremely wacky technologies. Things in these upper tiers should feel extremely strange and powerful as to justify the exclusivity.

## The Card System
The final piece to the RND redesign is inspired from [Stellaris](https://stellaris.paradoxwikis.com/Technology). It removes the ability to rush technology from the players' hands. The functionality of this system is tied in to the earlier mentioned disciplines.

Rather than having all available technologies able to be accessed, only a single technology from each discipline is shown to you. These are randomly selected from the available pool, requiring one to be unlocked for the next batch to be shown.


This not only forces players to choose between what technologies they want and need, but it allows individuals to slowly shape what disciplines they are going into based on random elements, which introduces more variation into a round.

By not allowing player's to 100% choose what they are doing, they can make mistakes and long for different paths. This seems like a bad thing, but it will only encourage them to experiment more and try out different things in other rounds.

# Thread Recap [archive]
- machine upgrades and RPED should work for items
- maybe have upgrade chips you can slot into items
- most items would need to support these for them to be useful
- combine with power cell stuff? would make sense.
- global station effects
- solars are 20% more effective
- scrubbers/vents are faster
- don't overdo this: we still want player interaction
- research categories (disciplines)
- put recipes in categories
- industrial
- biochemical
- experimental
- weaponry?
- we only need to 3-5 total imo
- you can do fun exclusive tech this way
- prioritize certain disciplines
- niche science techs can be on a per-discipline basis
- late game discipline stuff should be mutually exclusive
- late game stuff should FUCK HARD.
- make it good and worthwhile
- magic late game resources? bluespace crystals, mayhaps
- xenoarch stuff
- more utility effects
- ways of "locking" an artifact.
- machine upgrading
- make it part of the boards
- more info
- communicate what part does what
- experimental surgery
- sloth + expeditions + woundmed
- could also do a shitty version without woundmed/proper surgery
- players shouldn't be able to unlock everything
- make late-game tech lock out other late game tech
- 
- replayability.jpg
- can add tech from antags
- syndie
- abductors (whence)
- nukie
- xeno
- cult
- rnd scavenger hunt
- steal from stellaris
- you start out with a random pool of tech
- mspaint design
- drawio design 
- unlocking one unlocks more
- techs get locked out depending on which ones you do
- put tech in tiers
- lock tiers past a certain level unless you go all-in on a discipline
- rng rng rng rng rng rng
- you shouldn't get to 100% pick what you get to have
- 
- holy shit so good
- no more basic shit as tech
- you already have a microwave you don't need to research it again
- at least do some piss easy stat swaps or some shit
- i hate points i hate points
- rebrand to "tech progress"
- make players select the tech before the points fill it up
- you waste research time if you don't stay on top of it
- good?
- maybe?
- hackmd is shit software
- ditch points entirely?
- just do tech disks?
- not really compatible with any design we have
- fuck
- are points per-discipline
- uh maybe maybe not
- discipline tiers are kinda wacky
- unlock 3 T1 biochemical to get T2 biochemical
- do we want tech prereqs
- pyramid shaped?
- pyramid scheme