Topics

I would love to see books in the game - colonists could write novels (artistic) or educational books (artistic + other skills). This would be yet another opportunity for hilarious art descriptions (you know you'd get things like "A romantic horror novella, about an aunt that was inspired by boars. The book is written in a persuasive style". Novels could be read for recreation while educational books could be assigned to be read for another pawn to learn a little bit of the skill. Additionally, bookshelves would be a nice furniture item to have, to store books and for decoration.
Thoughts?

I am sure that everyone has had this situation: a brilliant research colonist reduced to cleaning duties after the last tech has been acquired. Simply adding more technologies will not solve this in the long run. My suggestion: technologies that can be researched in an iterative manner. At the end of each major "branch" there could be a tech that can be researched over and over again for diminishing returns.

For example, after geothermal power is researched, there is "Efficiency 1" for say 1000 points that increases the efficiency of geothermal stations by 10% (of base value). Once that is researched, "Efficiency 2" becomes available for 2000 points that increases the efficiency of geothermal stations by 5% (of base value). This would appear in the same physical space on the tech screen as "Efficiency 1" so that it does not actually grow in size. As each project is completed, the next one becomes available with their cost growing in a linear manner while the benefit they provide follows the sequence k/n where k is a constant while n is the number of the tech. This sequence is not converging - technically any increase could be achieved, but the time to reach insane bonuses would be huge.

This would mean that there is a point in researching late game as you can always get a bigger buff, but colonies would require a very long time to reach "over powered" stats. My other ideas include:

* Faster machining crafting at the end of the gun tech tree
* More HP for turrets at the end of the gun tech tree
* Higher capacity for batteries at the end of the refining and geothermal power tech trees
* Higher treatment quality after vitals monitor
* Higher yield from mining / faster mining speed after deep drilling

I just think it would be great to have something like this for the late game. On the topic of research I am also of the opinion that there should be a technology for crafting simple prosthetic, glass eyes (get rid of disfigured but provide no sight bonus) and maaaaybe even crafting bionics (would need advanced components and plasteel). But that is not relevant here. What do you guys think about having an infinite tech tree?