Allow trigger technologies to use max_level

[MrSmoothieHuman]

I'd like to ask about the feasibility of letting trigger technologies, even select ones, to be compatible with max_level (As I just found out it doesn’t work )

08-18-2026, 23-16-52.png (26.95 KiB) Viewed 223 times

The main usecase for this would be to make it way simpler to create bonus/prod technologies that would rather not take research, or would feel more thematically correct using a trigger technology (like craft item/fluid, place building, send item into orbit, etc). My personal usecase was making a more balanced form of upgrading beacon distribution, where if you sent up a special item into orbit it'd research a bonus tech that'd increase it by X%.
Right now, there are two ways of achieving this feature:
1. Have a bunch of duplicate trigger technologies, the same way normal bonus technologies work in vanilla. (Looks weird to the player and causes tech tree bloat).
2. Use scripting to hide and replace technologies, to make it look like its the same technology. (Naturally has an overhead runtime cost, plus can cause issues with other mods).

I'm no good at scripting and the former option feels too clunky, even if i do shave down the amount of levels it has - so having this functionality in the API would allow for a lot more usecases for trigger technologies, presuming its doable within the engine

[Rseding91]

Given the engine tracks 'the prerequisites were satisfied, research this' and that's forever marked as satisfied how exactly is that supposed to work with a technology that has multiple levels? Would it just instant research all of them?

The trigger system was never designed for a technology to not be fully researched once the trigger prerequisites were satisfied.