The in-game tech tree viewer seems pretty functional and complete. I'm pretty happy with how it is working.
The only thing that makes me a bit uneasy about it is that it allows me to browse through tech far beyond what I already have. (Which isn't a big deal, because this is my third playthrough anyway.) So perhaps it would benefit from a spoiler-filter, like the item info box things have.
Usually the only things I want to know from the tech viewer are: Does this research lead to anything else; and if so, do those new topics require other prerequisites as well.
I guess it could have a filter to put ****** for techs that are too far off. I'm not sure what the best way is to determine what techs can be seen, but one idea is to show any tech which:
- Could be researched now (ignoring item requirements)
- Has any of the researchable techs as a direct prerequisite
I think that would probably work well. It probably wouldn't hide many techs unless you started browsing deep into the future.
[edit]
I've thought about it a little bit more, and decided that it might be better to be slightly more restrictive in the following way:
Instead of revealing a tech if we can research any of the prerequisite, it would probably be better to only reveal them when we are able to research
all of the prerequisites. Everything else could be hidden as *******, and revealed by a "show spoilers" button.
This way, some techs would say "leads to *******", so that we'd know it leads to something, but we wouldn't be told what that something is unless we are close to unlocking it anyway.
Any thoughts about this?