Matrix Games Forums

 Forums  Register  Login  Photo Gallery  Member List  Search  Calendars  FAQ 

My Profile  Inbox  Address Book  My Subscription  My Forums  Log Out

Research system & mechanics

 
View related threads: (in this forum | in all forums)

Logged in as: Guest
Users viewing this topic: none
  Printable Version
All Forums >> [New Releases from Matrix Games] >> Distant Worlds 1 Series >> Research system & mechanics Page: [1]
Login
Message << Older Topic   Newer Topic >>
Research system & mechanics - 6/20/2014 4:11:26 AM   
pkoko

 

Posts: 39
Joined: 6/8/2014
Status: offline 		Let me first start that I understand the current system and I like the idea of not spamming research facilities to win. But I feel there are couple of flaws in the current system.

1- Research is too cheap economically. What I mean is that maintenance costs for research labs are too low. IMHO, each research lab should have annual maintenance cost of 20K cr or something similar. Doing so will stop research labs spamming on every spaceport. And research bases will actually have an important role.

2- The maximum research cap is a brilliant idea. But it is executed poorly. The gap between empires is too small. At the beginning of the game (one colony) the cap is ~650k and but by end game (30+ colonies) is ~1200k. That IMHO is unrealistic. The difference between big empires & small ones is too small. I think the cap should increase more as empires progress. I am not looking at a massive increase but the research cap should increase by cube root of the empires GDP. So for the cap to double; my empires GDP has to increase 8 fold. For the cap to triple; GDP has to increase 27 and so forth. With the above suggestion #1; it will be very hard economically for empires to always research at the cap.

3- Lastly, crash researching a project should not be possible on every project. Make a limit of one crash research per game year. Or you can only crash one project at a time. This way "rich" players don't crash everything at once and runaway from everyone.

Thanks for reading
Post #: 1
RE: Research system & mechanics - 6/20/2014 4:19:13 AM   
pkoko

 

Posts: 39
Joined: 6/8/2014
Status: offline 		Sorry-- But I forgot to add this----

If research is expensive economically and difficult then this would encourage more early game conflicts instead of everyone teching to high end weapons etc. Fast research will be too expensive and it is cheaper and easier to attack your opponent now. Imagine games with lots of early-mid game conflict and everyone is not just expanding and researching. Sounds like more fun to me.

(in reply to pkoko)
Post #: 2
RE: Research system & mechanics - 6/20/2014 4:26:11 AM   
buglepong

 

Posts: 46
Joined: 4/12/2014
Status: offline 		Justt change the tech trees so that its not so easy to rush branches by having more cross over prerequisites.

Also you can adjust the relative cost of research in the custom game menu

(in reply to pkoko)
Post #: 3
RE: Research system & mechanics - 6/20/2014 6:38:19 AM   
pycco

 

Posts: 345
Joined: 5/28/2013
From: United States of America
Status: offline 		throwing money at research does speed it up for a few reason's the scientist can use it to do mass experiments to find the fastest way to achieve the goal, even if the $ just goes to hiring 2x the amount of researcher's more can be done at a time then. imo the crash projects should have a % of a chance of destroying a location with labs, they tried something a little to crazy and it went boom. or have it kill a scientist if it goes bad, damage a planet, there a lot of things they could do.

as for the research rate vs a large and small empire i believe the reason they did it this way is to make both a viable option to play. imo they should base research out-put on population that is taxed more than labs.

as for the cheap economically part set your research cost higher and even T2 techs cost almost 500K to crash from 0%.

< Message edited by pycco -- 6/20/2014 7:40:43 AM >

(in reply to pkoko)
Post #: 4
RE: Research system & mechanics - 6/20/2014 11:08:23 AM   
Nanaki

 

Posts: 306
Joined: 6/4/2014
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: pkoko

2- The maximum research cap is a brilliant idea. But it is executed poorly. The gap between empires is too small. At the beginning of the game (one colony) the cap is ~650k and but by end game (30+ colonies) is ~1200k. That IMHO is unrealistic. The difference between big empires & small ones is too small. I think the cap should increase more as empires progress. I am not looking at a massive increase but the research cap should increase by cube root of the empires GDP. So for the cap to double; my empires GDP has to increase 8 fold. For the cap to triple; GDP has to increase 27 and so forth. With the above suggestion #1; it will be very hard economically for empires to always research at the cap.



I disagree with this. The whole point of the research cap is to prevent large empires from not only having an enormous military and economic advantage, but also an enormous technological advantage which compounds with the military/economic advantage. Also, 30+ colonies is hardly a large empire, infact, it is pretty middle of the road. I have seen AI-built empires with 100+ colonies easy.

quote:


1- Research is too cheap economically. What I mean is that maintenance costs for research labs are too low. IMHO, each research lab should have annual maintenance cost of 20K cr or something similar. Doing so will stop research labs spamming on every spaceport. And research bases will actually have an important role.


I agree here. At the moment the trivial cost of labs (which is getting even cheaper the next patch) makes the research upgrades on the high tech tree pointless because it is very easy and cheap to max out your research, the only reason you would ever want to go down that route is for the wonders.

Increasing the cost of research will make the research lab upgrades a lot more important in terms of reducing the costs of research labs.

_____________________________

I ate the batter of the bulge at Hans' Haus of Luftwaffles

(in reply to pkoko)
Post #: 5
RE: Research system & mechanics - 6/20/2014 3:54:30 PM   
MikeSF

 

Posts: 35
Joined: 6/1/2014
Status: offline 		1: #2 on the list kind of prevents #1, spam research components all you want you'll still be limited by your max research.

2: One could argue that as your colony gets larger research doesn't become easier in a linear fashion, more overhead means more flaws with research. Also it does tend to stretch out research times near the end, as you mention you might double your max research (minus bonuses) by a factor of 2 even though your empire increased by a factor of 30 (you sure the population increased that much though?), however each step in research basically doubles in cost, so the net result is even long research to get those later techs. One thing I remember about games like Master of Orion 2, is that early on it might take 20-40 turns to get a relatively low tech increase, yet end of game had so much research going on would get new, high level, tech advances every 2-3 turns and as a result why should I upgrade anything? Just wait a few more turns and I get the best tech possible.

3: Perhaps a mod to allow you to remove it? I'm not sure how (or if) the AI does any crash research, but I like it the way it is. Although later in the game if you have tons of money coming in, you do run into the same issues as I mentioned at the end of #2 above, too easy to crash mid-late game compared to the early game.

(in reply to Nanaki)
Post #: 6
RE: Research system & mechanics - 6/20/2014 5:00:56 PM   
pkoko

 

Posts: 39
Joined: 6/8/2014
Status: offline 		I don't like the idea that every empire in the mid-game onwards is researching at the max research cap. This is just unrealistic. Either the cap is too low or RPs are too easy to generate.

I think we can borrow something from SoTS in terms of research boost. To increase the speed of research we should have choices of different speeds. The higher the speed; the more expensive & more likely something bad will happen. What can possibly happen? Research labs explode, research is pushed all the way back halfway or near the end, scientists die etc.

But I still think there has to be a limit of one research crash item at once.

(in reply to MikeSF)
Post #: 7
RE: Research system & mechanics - 6/20/2014 5:06:44 PM   
pkoko

 

Posts: 39
Joined: 6/8/2014
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: Nanaki


quote:

ORIGINAL: pkoko

1- Research is too cheap economically. What I mean is that maintenance costs for research labs are too low. IMHO, each research lab should have annual maintenance cost of 20K cr or something similar. Doing so will stop research labs spamming on every spaceport. And research bases will actually have an important role.


I agree here. At the moment the trivial cost of labs (which is getting even cheaper the next patch) makes the research upgrades on the high tech tree pointless because it is very easy and cheap to max out your research, the only reason you would ever want to go down that route is for the wonders.

Increasing the cost of research will make the research lab upgrades a lot more important in terms of reducing the costs of research labs.


Thank you for emphasizing the ease of maxing research. You also made a great point about the uselessness of research improvements in the tech tree.

(in reply to Nanaki)
Post #: 8
Page:   [1]
All Forums >> [New Releases from Matrix Games] >> Distant Worlds 1 Series >> Research system & mechanics Page: [1]
Jump to:





New Messages No New Messages
Hot Topic w/ New Messages Hot Topic w/o New Messages
Locked w/ New Messages Locked w/o New Messages
 Post New Thread
 Reply to Message
 Post New Poll
 Submit Vote
 Delete My Own Post
 Delete My Own Thread
 Rate Posts


Forum Software © ASPPlayground.NET Advanced Edition 2.4.5 ANSI

0.703