Research Double Counted?

from Stardock Forums
This has bugged me some in the game because I cannot begin to count the times I've pounced on a research resource and watched as my enconomy more or less buckled due to the research suddenly taking an ungodly amount of money. I especially notic this as I am further down the research tree.

Basically I have to dial either my goverment spending down, or dial the research down. It's kind of funny.

Lets say I dial research to zero. I suddenly have ALOT of money. I hit the sliders for both military and social. As I bump one of them up or down, the money change stays fairly reasonably (say 20bc per precentage point).

Now let me dial either social or military to zero and them bump the research. Suddenly the money change is HUGE...we're talking on the order of about 3 to 4 times the change on the other sliders. It seems like there is what I can only describe as a huge research penalty in this game. It seems like +research resources, research globes, and the like boosts your research capacity, but will criple your economy if your sliders are left as they are.... that doesn't seem quite right to me.

Can someone who's in the know explain to me why there's this "research penalty" in the game?

SeanB
463 views 7 replies
Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
It's because you have "mucho" research capacity now. Compared to your military and social sectors your scientists are pumping out research like there is no tommorrow and it costs more money if you use all that capacity. Just dial back your spend rate to what debt you can afford or no debt if you wish.

Those 3 sliders are income distribution determinants, they just desiginate how you spend what income you have.

It's about capacity of the sector. It costs much more to use ALL your research capacity than to use ALL your military and social capacity because you have more research capacity. You still get what you pay for.
Elemental: Reforged
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
There is no research penalty. It it simply the lack of production bonus resources that make research bonus resources look expensive in comparison. If you avoided resources and filled your sectors with production bonus starbases, you can easily achieve the opposite effect too.
Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
Then this begs the question. What is the point of a research bonus if it causes your economy to cave? Most games where theres a research bonus involved, you get it as well...a bonus. I look at my research and I have more of it and my economy doesn't take a hit.

It seems to me that the top slider designates a percentage of your income to spend. So 50% means you spend 50% of your income, (so income of 1000, you spend 500). If the income slider is set, it should've been logical to assume that if you fool with the m/s/r sliders that your overall income shouldn't change.

Its one of only about 3 or 4 complaints I have in the entire game (and a relativley minor complaint I suppose , since I've been working around it)

SeanB
Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top
"Then this begs the question. What is the point of a research bonus if it causes your economy to cave? Most games where theres a research bonus involved, you get it as well...a bonus. I look at my research and I have more of it and my economy doesn't take a hit."

Part of your research increase comes for free (I think it's 2/3 of it). If you look at the Planet screen for one of your worlds, you'll see that the number of research points is stated as something like X+Y. The Y costs nothing. Getting research resources allows you to spend more on X, but also increases the free Y by quite a bit. Something like 100+500 is not unusual eventually.

Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top
Encyclopedia http://www.galciv.com/encyclopedia.asp -> Economics in GalCiv

Bonus from starbases to research - 2/3 free, 1/3 increased capacity
Bonus from buildings to research - 1/3 free, 2/3 increased capacity

*This is how i understand that.*
If you have 100% bonus to research from buildings and 0% bonus to production, then your Production capacity will be X, and research capacity will be X*1,666. Also, you are gaining X*0,333 free research, or 1/5 (20%) of your money spend on research.
Say you sat spending equal to X to production. Say it's 100% spending. Then you changed that to 50% production / 50% research. Now your spending become (X*0,5 (max production spending * 50%) + X*1,666*0,5 (max research spending * 50%)) = X*1,333. You see, it increased because you have more research capacity, and % calculated from capcity, not from spending (spending is also %, it's not a fixed sum in bc).

~SDC~
Reply #7 from Stardock Forums Top
#1

Force,

Another thing I have noticed:

The "research screen" (F5) needs to be toggled 2-3x between itself and the empire screen, F3) to correctly display the turns left to research completion.

By doing this, I gain a far more accurate "estimate" of the amount of money needed to obtain my current tech "next turn", and thus can save a fair amount of cash by properly changing my expenditure sliders.

~SDC~