We shall take our best and brightest...
and send them to the nearest black hole.
-Emperor Thiosk, Lord and Master of the Now-Extinct Neothiolytes
The above made-up quote illustrates my main problem with research in distant worlds. Black hole research is GROSSLY overpowered. Basically, if you get research stations up at black holes, you win the game. If you do not, you delay winning the game. If you do not do battle at said research installations to clear out opposing forces, you will actually have to shoot at ships that have some actual technology on them.
There are balance issues here. I will first describe what I feel DW does right with research, and make some suggestions for a rebalance on a later patch or expansion.
I am no game designer, so I’ll make some suggestions, intersperse some counter suggestions, and try to just get it all out there. Hopefully this fosters some discussion in the community about how research should work!
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Science research on Earth
Very seldom do leaders have anything to do with technological research. Sure, we could dump a bunch of money into a topic, a la crashing in DW, but WHY do you let your imperial leaders tell the scientists what to do? Bad move. You take scientists, you give them money, goals, lasers, and laboratory animals, then turn them to the wild and push them to send progress reports every other year. This is how science gets done, and it works pretty well.
Look at science research on Earth.
Southern California is a veritable research Mecca-- Cal tech, Stanford, Berkeley, UCLA, and others... lots of money and lots of results in the physical sciences come out of there. Then consider the east coast-- you have MIT and Harvard in basically the same place, another important location.
The average density of high-impact scientific research is lower the further from those locations you go. Its Boston and Los Angeles-- these are places you send your scientists. You do NOT send them to live and work permanently in orbit around extremely dangerous black holes.
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What works great for DW currently
I love the general research system currently. I really want to get that across. I think it could benefit from a little more flare... maybe a little more uniqueness between the races (but it took GalCiv 2 six years or so to get separate tech trees for each race?), but I don't have to worry about what order I’m getting tech in... I don't have to worry about balancing the need for biological research with industrial with weapons.
Everything pretty much just flows out as long as I give my scientists something to work with.
Unfortunately, what scientists need to work with are black holes, and I feel the focus on this anomaly research is just a little too heavy.
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The black hole problem
Research in DW is certainly simple. But the racial attributes are essentially useless, as they are all totally overshadowed by a couple installations in orbit around black holes. Novae or neutron stars, sure they work in a pinch, but you can ignore them completely if you get a black hole with two expanded-research stations.
Seriously, that +600% raw is that powerful.
Black hole research allows you to focus all research efforts in one place while excluding everything else entirely. I do not think this is the way it is supposed to be.
My solution in the current build is generally to do slow research, but then I'll get the black hole, and then I'll be running at normal speed, and while the AI does build stations at black holes, I haven’t noticed it being as contested as it probably should be, given the gross overpoweredness.
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Proposed Changes
1. Planet-focused research structure.
Research will primarily occur at planets. Cutting edge science requires the presence of a starport (or research starbase)—you need lots of raw materials coming in to do science, and a way to comfortably transfer scientists to posh orbital recreation sites for conferences. So far nothing has changed from the current setting—spaceports put out a modest amount of research.
To change this, make population and development important. The numbers in the research overview are a good way to look at this—as the population increases, the base value in each area will likewise increase; then that value is multiplied by the development value.
A planet with 10 billion people and 80% development would take its research value and multiply by 0.8. A planet with ruins (140% development, for instance) and 1 billion people would take its smaller base value but multiply by 1.4.
Imagine now an empire with one major, highly-developed planet, and 10 small colonies. Highest colonial population is 450 million. The lionshare of research in that empire would be happening at the homeworld. This makes sense. It takes a long time for a colony to build its own MITs.
2. Galactic anomalies are supplemental, and area-focused.
Unless I’m omitting something, there are four main classes of anomalies that influence research--Black holes (big boys), novas, neutron stars, ruins (little guys)-- each multiply all types of research by a certain base fraction.
First, wipe out the base percentages, and specialize the areas:
Energy – Neutron Hole
Weapons - Nova
Industrial - Ruins
High tech - Neutron Star
(I would propose keeping ruins as scenic locations and colony development boosters (bringing with them their own intrinsic research boosts due to the development boost) and bringing in another anomaly.)
Rather than generating raw research points, anomaly bases should increase research generated by colonies by a raw percentage. For example, 25% with basic labs, and increasing amounts as you improve the facility.
3. One base per anomaly
Hey look! Three black holes! Lets put three bases around one of them so we only have to protect one location.
Ummmm, no. This is not allowed. One base provides 100% of the possible allowed benefit. Two bases provide half the possible allowed benefit each. This makes every anomaly a sought-after place. Backup research institutions are buildable but don’t do anything until one gets all blow’d up.
4. Diminishing Returns
There must be a way for a smaller empire to compete with a larger empire. This could be done by carefully looking at racial research bonuses, dumb races fill up their colonies with people quickly to generate some research, while smart races tend to just generate more research points and are then unstoppable when they have a big enough base.
On the other hand, once the empire gets large enough, theres the potential for just too much research generation, so I could imagine a control on this by ordering the planets by research output, and putting arbitrary diminishing returns on each. #1 planet has full power, 99% power for number 2, and go down the list where each additional planet lends less and less to the research.
Likewise, anomaly research would also have a diminishing return of some kind… you get full benefit from the first anomaly, but by the fifth anomaly you are just building bases to keep other empires away.
5. Sharing anomaly sites
I failed kindergarten, because I was attempting to hoard cookies and construction paper as part of my attempt to usurp the tyrannical Mrs. Klutzelfeld.
I don’ t like sharing research sites with anyone, even allies. I would make this suggestion. If one empire runs an anomaly, its base generates full power research. If two empires are there, each base runs at 80% efficiency. By the time five empires are there, you are running at 20% efficiency—seriously pissing off all five involved parties. “(-27: your research installations are introducing noise into our measurements!)
I imagine war over anomalies, and I likewise imagine anomaly trading as an important diplomatic factor—we will do the weapon research at the nova while you do the energy research at the neutron star… then we’ll set up a research treaty to trade out some of those points.
6. Research is expensive
There really isn’t enough cost associated with research. Research stations should be enormously expensive to maintain, and require huge shipments of certain strategic goods—especially things like gold, carbon fibre, polymer, and dilithium crystals; if the strategic resources is needed for a certain item, like “nekros stone for weapons” then the weapon research installation would require enormous nekros stone shipments.
I imagine the entire output of several solar systems would be required for a race to deserve the x600% output of a black hole, in the current build. If the bonus is decreased, you’d need less stuff, but research is extremely valuable and should require the resources and maintenance costs.
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Conclusion
So, in closing, what I’m talking about here is ways to keep research simple, but make it a little richer. No more get-one-black-hole-and-forget-about-it strategy; high-pop, developed worlds are the most important factor; anomalies are likewise extremely valuable and targeted bonuses that supplement colonial research rather than running the research of the empire.
There’s a couple positive things that would come from this. Let’s say you kept finding an anomaly that improved weapon research, but not industrial. Well, that would tend to lead to a game strategy where you really focus on the weapons of a spacecraft rather than its size. By having generalized research, you don’t have this kind of random richness; just plunk 4 of each research lab in a starbase and stick it around black holes?
Boring.
Cheers!
