You don’t need Goo-Fu, the picture is linked some posts above yours. But thanks anyway. :) I wish they’d put Alien Crossfire on Gog. Maybe I will play SMAC again …

The original boxed game came with a very nice tech tree chart. It's big and easy to read and has more information than the chart linked above. Maybe we can get GOG to scan the original chart. If a GOG employee is reading this, just let me know if you want to borrow my copy. But the original chart is laid out similar to the one linked here -- it's still confusing.

http://www.game-point.net/misc/smacx-fixed-techtree-big-1.pdf

That one looks pretty good.

Meh, when i was new to the game, i had the blind research on. It's even more fun when you completely don't know what future techs will look like, what they will give you etc. That feeling of not knowing what future holds... it happens only once in the lifetime, don't waste it. Knowing the techs is like a spoiler to me :P That feeling when you explore the planet, not knowing what this fungus thing is, encountering indigenous life for the first time... Man.... You really FEEL like on an alien planet. And it didn't make things THAT much harder - I still won the game on the default difficulty (maybe on the second attempt, becouse first i had to figure out the interface). Good old times...

I prefer to play with blind research on. With it off, there is one strategy, and exactly one strategy: beeline to Industrial Automation (maybe deviate to weapons tech if you have nasty neighbors). With it on, you have to accomodate for what the game throws at you. Once you've reached the point where you can reliably beat the game at Transcend, anything to add a little variety is good.

Wow, there really aren't that many techs, are there? Is there a way to make the game run in a "marathon" type mode, so you won't have every tech so soon?

In the custom options when starting the game you can select "tech stagnation" as an option which basically does what you've described.

I'm so frustrated. I still have my original manual and disks but can't find my tech poster anywhere. It used to hang on my wall in the 90s. I remember it, all nice and glossy. Why is there no download for this?
EDIT: I FOUND IT! Yes! It's the Alien Xfire tree, but that's OK. Should I spend time scanning it and making a PDF. Does anyone still need this?

By all means, please post! Anyone know how to ask gog to include it as part of the downloadable stuff?

Somehow 2 years went by. I never posted the tech tree because in some other thread, I believe someone had already posted one.

No worries mate, I somehow managed to survive ;)