WtP SP costs

[bvanevery]

Fixing one thing breaks others.

Yes, but when you do it enough times you get better at it.  You have memorized everything's effect much like the back of your hand.  It's like some metagame where your job "playing SMAC" is to move all these tech puzzle pieces around.

There won't be absolute perfections.

False.     It just consumes a rather large amount of developer time, over a long period of real calendar time.

Even now I find myself shuffling a few techs around.  I realized a way that I could get Sky Hydroponics Labs to come later, by decoupling the notion of "spaceflight" from the notion of lobbing Planet Busters.  Who says that's space travel?  Could be a cruise missile skimming the surface.  So now I'm going back to a design I did a lot earlier, where Sky Hydroponics Labs is a late tech that I don't have to make excuses for where it's placed.  And a prereq for the other satellites.  I'm not 100% thrilled about that, as I wanted Geosynchronous Survey Pods to come 1st, but I can make that sacrifice to the UI gods.

Therefore, I dropped all the unimportant conditions like "game lore" and "research path" because they are difficult to define.

I actually compose upon that dimension simultaneously with all other concerns.  In a pinch I'll hand wave / do a lesser job with lore, but I try hard not to.  Sometimes it just takes me another month to realize how I can solve game design and lore problems at once.  Like just after I've released my latest mod version.