A capital can be raised to TL 10 with programs, causing all foundations to go up to TL 10. The capital can then import TLs from a nearby foundation and demolish the program, resulting in a stable condition where the capital is effectively uplifting itself without spending labor on programs.
I think imported tech should not count for purposes of uplifting foundations. This is a harder fix (the easiest fix is to just prevent demolishing under certain conditions) but I think it handles more cases.
Turned out not to be as hard as I thought. In the scenario above, if you demolish the tech programs on the capital, the foundations will begin to regress.
Will it still regress if the foundation is naturally higher in TL than the capital? If not, building/demolishing will still give an advantage to players who happen to have native TL9/10 planets in range of their capitals. It's not a huge advantage and the capital is more vulnerable if the foundation gets taken out, so it might be an acceptable risk.
@WTVd0: No, you're right, that's still a hole. But I think I can fix that too. It basically means you can't uplift a capital higher than its "native" tech level (whatever it gets from tech programs).
It was already impossible to uplift other planets higher than the capital, so I think this would be consistent.
You probably shouldn't be allowed to import tech to a capital. It should give you an appropriate error.
What is the proper terminology for the baseline TL that planets revert to when independent? Is it the "native" TL, "fated" TL, or something else?
@WTVd0: Internally I call it "fated tech level". What I call "native" TL (or sometimes "natural" TL) is the tech level including tech programs, etc.
Fix deployed to server.