Do you Enable Tech Trading?

[An Author]

I always do, but every time I create a new game I mull this over.

What are the advantages/disadvantages?

Assuming that the races are balanced, will the overall effect of tech trading be that the empires advance faster?

[smidlee]

For me tech trading allows me to sell tech for a large sum of cash when needed. It makes the game easier. So I normally allow tech trading to help the AI but no trading tech for my empire.

[Ri0Rdian]

Exactly what smidlee said, enabled, but only to either gift to my long-time allies that deserve and need it or to allow AIs to trade each other. Otherwise it is too gamey to extract money this way.

[cpc8472]

Agreed with above replies, but I'm more liberal with trading (or sometimes even giving) military techs to allies so as to help them be stronger vs. pirates or any empire that stirs up trouble. And sometimes you can get techs that are normally exclusive to other races.

Also, trading techs can help improve the disposition of other empires towards you and make it quicker and easier to form fair trade or mutual defense pacts with them.

[Cypher]

I often start as a pre-warp civ in a developed, hostile galaxy for a challenge and tech trading is essential to my empires survival, since to everyone else i'm just an upstart independent ripe for exploitation... until they meet my advanced weaopons i just got from my super advanced ally, also its inevitable someone will try and take my homeworld, thus giving me Casus Belli to use my newly acquired weapons and take a few of their worlds... its always the quiet ones you have to watch!

[Icemania]

Tech selling is broken and must be avoided. When you can Tech trade with many races in the game, you can get many tech in return for each tech you have, so this is arguably broken as well.

One option to consider is the 1.04 AI Improvement Mod on decent aggression settings at least Restless. As more races have negative biases toward you, less will want to Tech Trade i.e. enabling limited Tech Trade with only a few races so you can't abuse it quite as much. But even then no Tech Selling!

[LSD]

Tech trading's always overpowered in strategy games, but in Distant Worlds it's gamebreakingly broken.
You can make ridiculous money off it, but even more broken, you can get your hands on other race's unique components.
A single tech trade can put you into massively positive relations with another empire, too.

I don't use it.

[An Author]

Thanks all! I will be turning it off from now on.

[icedude94]

I don't use it to get money since making money is already easy enough. I find it most useful for diplomatic negotiations like convincing two races to stop fighting eachother or convincing them to declare war on an enemy.

Trading technology in exchange for favors like trade embargoes and war declarations has been key for me in defeating the Shakturi in every game I play against them. Get as many people as possible to trade sanction the Shakturi to starve them of resources and then get everybody to declare war on them.

[An Author]

Interesting, thanks. I'm playing as pirates right now and I want to prevent the empires from becoiming too homogious. Is turning tech trading a good way to do this?