Not sure if this changed but last patch once you researched fusion you got (fusion) anti-missiles for free even if you didn't have anti-missile tech. It seemed a little counter-intuitive, shouldn't fusion anti-missiles require both techs?

So as discussed in the bug report thread, the reason the anti-missile tech prerequisites are the way they are, is because parts do not have "prerequisites". Once you research a tech, that tech may supply one or more new parts.

I'd like to suggest a possible way to deal with that (edited the topic title appropriately).

I guess my proposal then would be something like http://stars-in-shadow.com/forum/viewto ... ?f=5&t=691, where the fusion and anti-matter anti-missile parts are provided by "bonus techs" that do not require research, but instead are acquired automatically once all their prerequisites are met.

Of course, in order for it really be a polished idea I imagine there would have to be a bit more GUI support than what I managed to do in my mod. For example, instead of showing "cost: 0" in the research panel for a bonus tech, it should probably replace that line with a short sentence saying something such as "this tech is automatically acquired once all its prerequisites have been met."

The bonus tech idea is interesting, but I'd suggest the upgraded anti-missle techs are valuable enough they ought to be a separate research tech at significant cost (still requiring both prerequisites: fusion warheads and anti-missle tech for fusion AM, for instance). Just IMHO, obviously!

I suppose that's always possible. Though I figured there's probably a reason they don't require additional research (To me it makes sense that anti-missiles wouldn't require a completely separate tech just for a different warhead... though I guess you could say the same about torpedoes), so I wanted to come up with a solution that was as unintrusive as possible.

Meanwhile requiring the player to research a 0-cost tech seemed too obtuse, so I had the idea of making it work like a tech, while also requiring no additional management from the player.