I would like all three of these ideas combined for a revamped KB system.

1. Speed up kernel grind "Hunter"
2. Point Pool for KB "Gremrod"
3. Complex building system "Annihilator"

To me that sounds like a more interesting system than what we currently have. Im sure some things would need to be rebalanced but I like it.

It would open up the possibility for more trade going on as well "IE you have t4 small laser unlocked, but not the t4 laser tuning. So you would need to buy those from market if you wanted to build them.

IMO anything that adds more activity to the market is a good thing atm.

Ok, here's my 2 cents:

2Annihilator:
You propose to construct different robots of the same parts? But you compare one class of robots. They all have different characteristics (reactor, the processor, the guidance system). How does it balance? With plasteozin?
In my opinion the current system is more logical. Robots are created only from the materials. For each creates its own reactor, CPU, etc. I would agree with the use of weapons tuning, but everything else does not really fit into the concept.
As a variant would be logical to create parts. For example "nuimqol reactor of light robot". With the introduction of similar parts can be discussed about the technological level of spare parts. That is, you can create a robot with the parts of different levels. This system can be realized as a prototyping. I think that people would want to be very expensive, but powerful robots.
At the factory can make the separation: MK1, MK2, MK3 and MK4 robots. To create these will be used the parts of same level.

2Gremrod:
Hey buddy! Treat with ease. What for compensation or RP (research points)? How are you going to regulate cross-technology? How are you going to learn the unknown something, only with RP?

About my offer:
I like that you are trying to offer something. But I ask to offer the balance instead of personal gain.

p.s. and i'm sorry for my english

yeah, arga, thats where i put in the "middle part" production. You will be able to research stright into T4 Medium laser with the ResearchPoints you get from kernels, but you wont be able to produce the stuff right of the bat as standalone producer.

Also using head/leg slot modules as middleparts that are not built/used anyway would widen the demand for such. Keep in mind, each part needs a production line.

ATM its rather linear to build a t4 item: you buy/loot a T1, upgrade it to T2, then T3 and then T4 = three production lines, one single research path -> no need to bother about other research.

@Hunter:
see it also a bit more starter crafting friendly. during tutorial, you get all the components you need to build a light bot - and at the end its your choice to either use them for crafting your first mining-bot, or to equip your mission reward light

Agree, but userfriendly is close to borders with causality. Alternatively, Devs can leave the current system for robots MK1, for MK2 and higher bots possible to make more difficult system.

Let's merge it a little. Let it be a research pool, that sounds good. And let it be a complex construction - current amount of materials used in robots will be the same at all. However, we will produce them as a couple of parts - chassis, cpu, targeting system, reactor, armor, etc. After we have all the parts builded - we can assemble a robot. Such parts by itself should be useless, just for robot construction. As an additional - this system may lead to more diversifity in robot construction process - construct a light bot with mech targetting system - less cpu/reactor will left, but it may worth it. Or also this may lead to hybrid robots aswell.

The increase in prices of materials will increase the flow of money towards the miners. I think that this is unacceptable.
Necessary to remove the linearity of money from hunters to the miners.

1. Let's forget the compensation for right now. (If the amount of research per kernel is not changed.)
2. The Research Pool makes it a bit easier on the player to pinpoint want he/she wants to unlock. This goes well with cross technology too.
3. Yes you unlock/learn tech from RP spent from your RP pool.

Q. How does the pool get points?
A. Consuming kernels adds points to the RP pool.

Q. How does one learn tech with the RP pool.
A. You open the KB window that shows all tech with amount of RP needed to unlock/learn said item. Pick the item and spend RP to unlock the item.

Now something that is a must are prerequisites. i.e Before you unlock any t2 item you need the t1 version unlocked first and so on down the line to get the t4 item.

This removes the randomness behind unlocking the tech tree.

Back to point #2 above. The RP pool can have four pools of points. Green points, Yellow/Red points, Blue points, and White points. This is how the pool system would handle cross technology unlocking. This also makes it so you can't grind a single type of kernel for Research Points.

Also like the current system, at some point you can't get any more points out of a specific line of kernels. It would state just like it does now in game. "You can't learn any more from these kernels". So to continue to add points to your pool you need to move to the next tier of kernels.

Right, and full specialisation is needed in the area of production, prototyping, and research. The Research Pool system would solve many issues with the current system when it comes to grind and being forced to unlock items you don't care about.

That would be true, unless there was a exponential penalty appiled if the delta between item research branche (tiers) becomes too high.

Lets say that a branch of the tree has (30) modules.

T1 kernel is worth 1 point, T2 kernerls 10 points, T3 100, and T4 1000. (for example)

Base cost for learning a module is 100 points for T1, 1000 points for T2, 10000 points for T3, and 100000 points for T4.

Now that looks like it would be fairly quick to get from T1 to T4 of any item... BUT

There is an additional multiplier for every unlearned module in the previous tiers and a penalty for each known module in the current tier.

What this does is simulate the effect of 'lost' kernels.

So, in the example of 30 modules in say the light/assault tree. There is no T0 research, so your 'previous penalty' (PP) would be zero. You have no current learning, so your 'current penalty' (CP) is also zero.

That means you can learn a T1 module for 100 points. Very quick, very simple.

Learning T1 unlocks T2 of that module. But now penalties apply.

PP (prevous tier penalty) is total - known; 30-1 = 29

Learning T2 (same module) CP=0 at T2; is 1000*29 = 29k points. Not too bad.

PP = PP(T1) * PP(T2) or 29*29 = 841

Learning T3 (same module) CP=0 at T3 is 10k*841 = 841K points for T3

... in perspecitve that's 8430 T3 kernels or 840 T4 kernels worth of points. your going to really have to 'WANT' that now to spend that.

But you can now see that T4 is going to be 100K*29*29*29 about 2.4 M points.

however, that only gets expensive like that if you try to specalize to T4 on 1 item. The ability to do it is there, but you do so at great expense.

Look at T1 again. It takes 100 pts for the first item 200 for the second, etc until 2900 for the last item (100*CP). Which I believe is only 465K to learn all of T1 items.

Once all T1 was learned, your PP is 0, so the first T2 item would simply be 1000 pts.

----

The 'trick' here however is when you add in new items. Unlike the 'random' method, the player knows exactly which tree and branch to apply points to when the new item is introduced.

However, it would still be very expenisve for beginning researchers to learn a new item too high in the tier, while vetern producers would still have to pay a stiff CP cost.

The non-random method works just fine, it can allow beginner researchers to do low-tier specializations, while still requiring a significant amount of kernel hunting for high tiered items.

The values of the kernels may need to be tweaked a little, but you get the general idea of divergent math per level and compounded penalties per tier.

Keep in mind that the effective grind has become longer and longer, so it does not seem likely that it will become shorter. Having that said, I implore the DEVs not to make it longer either, they can't fiddle with these parameters all the time. If the effective grind is cut by 70% due to what you proposed, then everyone gets what they want, DEVs realise oh damn that was too easy, increase the grind again, but then people still keep their research. One moment of dropping the research requirement will have an instantaneous long-term effect. Kind of what happened when Observer kernels were released, in my mind a mistake.

Having that said, I am okay with specialisation if the amount of kernels required is increased (quite steeply). But why do people keep forgetting that we have a fair bit of specialisation already? We have both different sizes and colours of kernels.

Edit (to Arga): That sounds like an interesting idea, I'll have a think about it

@Lucius and Arga
When I say "grind" I really meant to say "blind grind". The current tech research system is totally blind and you have no idea what is going to unlock, unless you only have a few items left to unlock. We will never get away from grind completely. But I agree the grind should not become longer than it is already.

@Arga
I think that your idea can extend the Research Pool system. Basically it could be the math behind it this type of system.

What I mean by specialization is the idea of being able to specialize in spending my research in mining equipment only or speicifc robots etc.

Not sure where you were going with the different size,colours of kernels.