That's a nice idea, but it's really more of a 'wait until the sequel' sort of idea. But why stop there? Why not have continuous choice all the way down the tech tree- you choose whether to research size (makes the weapon smaller, but more expensive), power (makes the weapon slightly bigger and more expensive, but more powerful) or cost (which just makes it cheaper). Each improvement you make increases the cost for the next one.

You could do a similar thing for defenses, or in fact pretty much any area of research, with perhaps a few milestone techs such as Planetary Invasion or Trade which add new gameplay elements.

That's a nice idea, but it's really more of a 'wait until the sequel' sort of idea. But why stop there? Why not have continuous choice all the way down the tech tree- you choose whether to research size (makes the weapon smaller, but more expensive), power (makes the weapon slightly bigger and more expensive, but more powerful) or cost (which just makes it cheaper). Each improvement you make increases the cost for the next one.

They did that with the alternate reality mod in the library.

I'm pretty sure that'd make suicidal nearly impossible.

I'm pretty sure that'd make suicidal nearly impossible.

I think it would make it harder in some sense but not impossible. I don't think it changes the begining to mid game phase much if any, though I think it would make the suicidal game take longer and be more competative towards the end. This is the benefit in my mind.

Currently IMHO, to win at suicidal you have to fight and win some early wars when you are generally at a technological and planet count disavantage. Winning the first war or two is the only thing that catches you up to parity to the rest of the AI's. Both in the technologies you gain in each planet invasion as well as total number of planets. Once you're on a more equal footing with the AI's the humans superior ability to wage war makes the end pretty much inevitable unless you get ganged up on by a number of AI's at the same time.

The abrupt end of improvement in weapons and defenses means that once everyone reaches the end they're pretty much equal. With equal ships the human wins (assuming relative equality in production capacity). By extending weapons and defense development you delay the point at which victory for the human is inevitable and at the same time would make the mop up phase (i.e. the boring phase) shorter because the victor would be continually increasing his technical advantage.

Anyway, that's my opinion.

Not a good idea. The tech tree is long enough. If anything, give some bonuses for completing the tech tree. I hate that after I pretty much research everything I want, my discovery sphere's are pretty much useless to me. Someone posted before about this, like maybe giving some sort of reward for having a research building beyond the typical research bonus. At that point in the game, you might as well demolish any research facilities you might have as all they do is cost maintenance, and on a gigantic galaxy with at least one hundred and fifty planet under my belt, that would be alot of maintenance.

An extended tech tree would give you something to continue to use your discovery spheres on that would be benefical to winning the game.

As you mentioned, research building do become sort of useless once the tech tree is complete. Supposedly, research continues to add to the tech component of MV scoring even after the tech tree is complete, but I've generally not bothered with it and somewhere in the middle of the game I go back and start changing my NLC's or discovery spheres to stock markets. On a gigantic galaxy this could be 500 planets which is quite a pain.

I play with tech trading off and slow research, even so I'm usually done with the tech tree in 3 or 4 years. I almost always end up with more techs stolen via planet invasion than actually researched (might be nice to be able to turn off tech stealing as well). It usually takes me 6 to 8 years to finish off the AI's so pretty much half the game there's no real need or reason to research. That's the issue I was trying to address.

Clearly, this isn't happening anytime soon. It's also something that should be optional, but it is something I would like to see.