Tech Tree

[clovenhoof]

So this is a tech tree I made for my own use, I don't know if it's helpful for others, but I thought I'd post it.  I find all the ones with lines going everywhere to be confusing and impractical.  This one, when the research options pop up on the screen, I can just look at the tree and immediately see where each option will take me.

When tech are fully or partly side-to-side adjacent to one another, the one on the left is a prerequisite to the one on the right.  Lines also obviously connect a tech with a prerequisite.  So in the top left corner, Centauri Ecology (CEc) isn't adjacent to anything, nor is it linked to anything: it is assumed that this will always, always, always, be the first tech you pursue, so there's no need to show what it is a prerequisite for.  Below that, INet is beside PlaN; you need the first to get the second.  Similarly with IB and IE.  IA is adjacent to both PlaN and IE, those are its two prerequisites.

The big thing here is that the tree assumes you acquire techs in a particular order - yellow then orange, then green, light blue, or dark blue in any order, then red, then either light grey or purple in either order, then dark grey. 

I don't link a tech to a prerequisite which you are assumed to already have.  So I don't link Industrial Automation (IA) to Industrial Nanorobotics (INa), for example, or Mind/Machine Interface (MMI) to Graviton Theory (GrvT). 

By contrast, some techs are linked between groups.  One might choose to pursue Fusion Power before Superstring Theory.  That player needs to know that he at least has to get the four orange techs ending in Cyberethics.  Similarly if he chooses to go for Monopole Magnets before Fusion Power, he at least needs to get Polymorphic Software from the Green group.

Milestone techs are in bold.  For me, these represent my goals as I go through the game.

In many boxes, there is a note in the bottom half that gives what, for me, is the main benefit of the tech that I don't already know.  I know that MMI gives you drop pods and Copters and the Cyborg Factory, but I tend to forget that it gives you Thinker specialists too. 

Hope that helps!

[bvanevery]

What software did you use to grid this out?  The tech tree for my mod would look rather different from this.  It's very strictly regimented.  Every tech has 2 prereqs from the previous tier of techs, except at the very end of the tree.  It would look like a strict pyramid moving from left to right.  Dependencies would be best expressed by "brick laying" the next set of boxes, on the join of 2 previous boxes.

[clovenhoof]

What software did you use to grid this out?  The tech tree for my mod would look rather different from this.  It's very strictly regimented.  Every tech has 2 prereqs from the previous tier of techs, except at the very end of the tree.  It would look like a strict pyramid moving from left to right.  Dependencies would be best expressed by "brick laying" the next set of boxes, on the join of 2 previous boxes.

I used Microsoft Excel.  It was a pretty lengthy process, I went through a bunch of revisions, but wasn't ever really happy with the results before now.  (I confess to being a little bit OCD.)