your best bet is editing the techtree.techtree file in notepad. it can be found in C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\sword of the stars ii\assets\base\Tech (steam version). you will want to replace < HumanPercent >5< / HumanPercent > or < HiverPercent >15< /HiverPercent > or whichever race you are playing with 100. you will need to search for the research percent in increments of five and replace with 100 until all viable techs are fixed. be sure to make a copy of the file just in case. Hope this helps.
[Edited by Gavinhawk, 11/2/2011 8:43:18 AM]
[Edited by Gavinhawk, 11/2/2011 8:44:18 AM]
[Edited by Gavinhawk, 11/2/2011 8:44:51 AM]
Since the techs that are not available to all races, for example Grav Blades for Humans, are set to a 0% chance of research success and none of the possible research projects are less than 10% chance of having them you can do this.
Open the techtree.techtree file in MS Word
in the replace window enter the following
For the find section < RacenamePercent> ^#^# < /RacenamePercent>
For the replace section< RacenamePercent> 100< /RacenamePercent>
this will give you access to all tech while leaving out the ones you are not allowed to have because of your race.
^# is the function to find any single digit number
^#^# is for any two digit number and
^#^#^# is for any three digit number and so on
if you see that a research project says
< IsPermanent>True< /IsPermanent> it is a starting tech and you do not need to research it for example Plasma Cannons
Hope this post gets rid of some of the confusion about which techs to edit and which to leave alone. And as Gavinhawk suggested, create a save file of the original just in case something goes wrong.
So far at turn 250 and no bugs or crashes with all techs I should have.
[Edited by Keokri, 1/9/2012 12:25:56 PM]
As a side note Most (not all) Patches for the game reinstall a copy of the original techtree file so you must redo the edit for it to work. Be careful they may edit the way some techs work or edit their names so work from the updated file provided by those patches.
[Edited by Keokri, 1/9/2012 12:33:35 PM]