I was playing today on 0.77B and a couple of things about the tech tree/library system annoyed me, so I thought I'd post about them.
First of all, why even have a separate library and tech tree in the first place? I don't like how you have to go back and forth between the two to learn anything useful. For example, if you are looking at Space Elevators on the Tree and you see Elon's Lift, you have to actually look it up in the Library to see what it does. That requires actually finding it in the Library, which can take a while. I think it would be better if the Tree and the Library were just integrated.
Second, it would be really nice to have a better search system in the technology tree. Right now, the system works exactly like it did in GalCiv3. You can search for specific technologies, but only if you know their name, or part of their name. But what if I wanted to search for a technology and I couldn't remember the name? What if, for example, I couldn't remember the name "Space Elevators" and I could only remember that I wanted the technology to unlock Elon's Lift? I should be able to type "Lift" in the search and have it pull up Space Elevators as an option. Another thing the search should be able to do is to find everything that uses a specific resource. Let's say I survey an anomaly and get some Harmony Crystals. It would be really nice to be able to search the Library or Tree and see, at a glance, all the things that use Harmony Crystals. That way I can decide what techs to research so I can use my crystals.
The other thing that I noticed might actually be a bug. But since I'm not certain whether it's a bug, I'll just post it here. When you mouse over an Executive Order on the Tech Library, it doesn't actually show you what the Executive Order does. You have to actually research the technology (or remember from a previous game you played) if you want to know what it does. This obviously should not work this way. How am I supposed to know if I want to research a tech if I don't know everything that it does?
