I like the idea of incorporating gradual improvements to existing technologies.
I like the way you propose progress towards technologies is given. I’d like to throw in that using the tech or related techs in practice should also give some kind of benefit.
Here’s a summary of my opinion on the research web:
- Technologies should be organized as a web, where each technology has hard requirements, which you must have, and soft requirements that speed up that tech research.
- Techs should have upgrades that increase their efficiency when you use them more / put more research in
- Only technologies with some amount of the hard requirements satisfied should be shown to the player
- Just doing things should generate some research. This would be the way the player unlocks the first techs, like fire, before creating research centers.
- With research centers the player gets progress towards techs they want to research based on how many scientists etc. are employed. I think there should be a some kind of limit on how many techs the player can research at once, no matter how may science centers they have, as I’d like to have the same logic apply to the space stage.