Core Game Mechanics and AI: Technology

The Core Game Mechanics and AI mod overhauls and improves upon the vanilla technology paradigm in the following ways:

1. It completely overhauls all the vanilla technology files, making sure that every technology is both viable and useful. The weights governing when techs appear have been thoroughly reworked, especially regarding weapons, making for a better tech system. While doing so this mod also fixes several hundred vanilla bugs in the technology files, including a lot of bugs and oversights relating to machine empires and what techs they can and can't research.It also overhauls the tech tree to make sure techs have proper prerequisites and offer a more balanced game, and it optimizes the tech files by removing a lot of the excess and redundant code.
2. It rewrites and greatly expands the vanilla technology AI weight in a manner that substantially enhances the AI's performance and choice of technologies relative to multiple factors and in synergy with other ExO mods. This is a major change that dramatically impacts the A.I. - I make sure the A.I. will tech smartly, ignore techs it will not be able to utilize or which are quite bad in vanilla. I also make sure it will prioritize weapon techs when at war, or prioritze resource development techs as strategic. This change has a cascade effect on the A.I. which improves its performance.
3. It fixes the vanilla debris system by firing a special event whenever a new ship component technology is researched. This event makes sure the empire that finished the research will receive all prerequisite technologies for that component. For example, if the player does not have lasers 1/2/3 and he/she researches lasers 4, this event automatically grants the player the missing technologies. Aside from getting rid of a lot of useless clutter in the tech window, this significantly enhances the AI, which often upgrades its preexisting designs rather than makes new ones. As a result the AI will often no upgrade its ships because the "upgrades\_to" chain on the component files is incomplete. To balance this change the defines regarding debris have been adjusted: the amount of time debris exists was reduced from 1800 to 360 and the base research cost of debris was increased from 0 to 10

As a result of this research leaders are much more important in this mod for two reasons:

* In vanilla there are several hundred errors in the tech files where research leaders were incorrectly inputed in the files. For example, a society/biology technology would have a higher chance of appearing if you had a leader with an engineering specialty in the physics science slot, and the A.I. was geared to pick it based on its engineering scientist. These bugs have been fixed.
* In vanilla the appearance of rare techs is rather arbitrary, and different techs use different kinds of weighting to determine when they appear - obviously due to being worked upon by different devs and at different times. This system was rationalized and systematically implemented throughout the tech files: In vanilla often the best chance is to have either a Curator or a Maniacal leader, with Spark of Genius also often - but not always - impacting this. This has been reworked thus: If your leader has either/or the Psionic/Spark of Genius/Curator trait it gives a 200% chance of getting a rare tech. If your leader has either/or the Maniacal/Synthethic/A.I. Sapient Assistant traits it has 150% chance of getting a rare tech. If it has a trait from both categories the bonuses stack(!). This also makes sure that the Psionic Trait is great to have on a tech leader.

Finally, this mod introduces hundreds of changes, most of which will not be specified here. Below is a list of key changes in the vanilla tech tree:

* The tech Assault Armies was changed from a starting tech to a tier 1/1 technology and it was moved to the society tree. This makes sure that rushing is more difficult.
* The tech Defense Platform was changed from a starting tech to a tier 1 technology. This also makes sure that rushing is more difficult.
* I changed the auto-exploration into a starting tech and readjusted the tech tree accordingly. [u]You do not another mod that changes auto-exploration[/u] when running this mod.
* Made jump drive less rare but changed it to t4. It will be exceptionally hard to get this without top tier FTL tech.
* Gene Banks was made into an important technology (the genome research tree was reworked) and it gives an extra Biological trait point.
* The extra civic point bonus was moved from Galactic Administration (Empire Complex) to the technology The Collective Self (both t3 technologies).
* Chemical Bliss was changed to a non-rare tier 1 tech. It is now a prerequisite for Neural Implants (slave processing plant) as a mini tech-branch.
* The ability to [u]Robomod[/u] is unlocked at game start. I find it ridiculous that you can't modify robots and machines until a later stage in the game.
* Dragon Armor and the Enigmatic Techs are obtainable as exceedingly rare techs. They have a very small chance of appearing either when (a) a different empire with which there is contact has acquired this technology (mirroring espionage), or (b) if the player already has at least 1 other enigmatic tech (does not apply for dragon armor). [u]You do not need another mod that changes Enigmatic technology appearance[/u] when running this mod - but you should know that this mod does not change events in anyway, so the enigmatic fortress event chain is not affected at all!
* The special techs of Horizon Signal have been reworked to have a very small chance of appearing when a different empire with which there is contact has acquired these technologies AND built the Omega Alignment. This makes sure that these powerful technologies do not break MP game balance, or that the A.I. also has potential access to these techs in SP games once Horizon Signal fires - horizon signal is restricted to non-A.I. players, so its highly imbalanced.