Soo, Research, Answered Once and for All (Hopefully)

[Whiskiz]

So can anyone actually confirm if you are supposed to build to your Total Empire Research Potential (TERP) going by your Total Research Capacity (TCR) or your Actual Output (AO)

Done alot of research and the answers are mixed, with no real grounds for each side in either arguments.

More people say Terp is based off TCR, yet TERP is highlighted in red, while the AO is also interestingly highlighted in red exactly the same, as if to give clear indication that is what you base it off of.

And then, another argument for it being based off TERP, is if it was based off AO it would mean the only thing a scientist is used for, is to go to the empire wide research bonus location to earn a bit extra research to make free, which you then don't have to pay for in maintenance from a few more labs.

But if it was based on TRC, you could for example have 120k/120k/120k in a 360k TERP setting and put a scientist on a research station giving all up 30% extra in weapons, and receive a bonus 40K weapons on top. if it was based on AO that would make weapons over the mark by that 40K and therefore the bonus would be useless, the only thing it would do for you there is a save a lab and a third (30K per lab remember) as mentioned in maintenance and/or building costs which is minimal.

Surely scientists are a bit more important than just saving some maintenance cost on a few labs? But again, why is both TERP and AO highlighted the exact same and the only things highlighted? And also, if the TERP is how many people there are to actually do the research, it would then make more sense based off "Actual Output" since TCR is how many spaces are available, AO being the bonus being extra space available, extra space not usable if there isn't the people to fill said space (over the TERP limit)

So, does anyone actually know which it is? May be hard to actually confirm one way or the other though unless someone has a quote from devs or a patch or something.

[Aeson]

Your question is poorly formed - you 'build' your Total Empire Research Potential by expanding your population (or perhaps GDP). It's your Actual Research Output that depends on your Total Empire Research Potential and your Total Research Capacity (which you increase by building research labs), not your Total Empire Research Potential which depends on your Actual Research Output and your Total Research Capacity. The Actual Research Output for each field is the number of tech points which are added each cycle to the technology you're currently researching in the appropriate field. Thus, if I have an Actual Research Output of 50K in Weapons and I'm researching a tech that costs 480K research, I can push that tech out in about 9.6 cycle periods (I never remember how long the cycle periods are, but it's the same period of time as is used for pulses of tax collection and the payment of non-instantaneous expenses like ship maintenance).

Total Empire Research Potential is the basic amount of research your empire can conduct. This is then multiplied by the sum of the bonuses to your total research potential, distributed to the various fields based on your Total Research Capacity, and then the research you produce in each field is multiplied by the total bonus you have to research in that specific field.

Example:
I have a Quameno Technocracy game where my empire has a Total Empire Research Potential of 634K, I have a Total Research Capacity of 23K in weapons, 1050K in Energy and Construction, and 1000K in High Tech, and my Actual Research Output is 15K in Weapons, 991K in Energy and Construction, and 873K in High Tech. I have a 50% bonus to Total Empire Research Potential due to being a Technocracy, I have a 40% bonus to Total Empire Research Potential due to being Quameno, and I have a 20% bonus to Total Empire Research Potential because at least one of my scientists is a Super Genius.

So, how does this work? To get to the Actual Outputs (which add up to about 1800 total research output), I first take my Total Empire Research Potential and multiply it by (1 + 0.5 + 0.4 + 0.2) = 2.1. This gives me a modified Total Empire Research Potential of about 1331K research. Next, I sum up my Total Research Capacity in each field, which gives me 2073K total research capacity. To get my unmodified Weapons research output, I multiply my modified Total Empire Research Potential of 1331 by the fraction formed by dividing my Weapons Research Capacity by my Total Research Capacity, in this case (23K/2073K) = 0.011. This gives me my unmodified Weapons Research Output, which is about 15K. Since I don't have any multipliers to my weapons research output, this is also my modified Weapons Research Output. I do the same thing to get my Energy and Construction Research Output and my High Tech Research Output.

So what does the formula for Actual Research Output by field look like, you might wonder?

Code: Select all

    WeaponsResearchOutput =  (TotalEmpireResearchCapacity)*(1 + govBonus + civBonus + superGenius + charBonus)*(WeaponsResearchCapacity)*(1 + WeaponsBonus)
                            --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                                (WeaponsResearchCapacity + EnergyResearchCapacity + HighTechResearchCapacity)
   
 
    EnergyResearchOutput =  (TotalEmpireResearchCapacity)*(1 + govBonus + civBonus + superGenius + charBonus)*(EnergyResearchCapacity)*(1 + EnergyBonus)
                           ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                            (WeaponsResearchCapacity + EnergyResearchCapacity + HighTechResearchCapacity)
 
 
    HighTechResearchOutput =  (TotalEmpireResearchCapacity)*(1 + govBonus + civBonus + superGenius + charBonus)*(HighTechResearchCapacity)*(1 + HighTechBonus)
                             --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                                 (WeaponsResearchCapacity + EnergyResearchCapacity + HighTechResearchCapacity)
 

govBonus is the percentage bonus to research, expressed as a decimal (so 50% = 0.5), from your government type (use negative numbers if the bonus is really a malus), which can be found in the government screen or the research screen.
civBonus is the percentage bonus to research, expressed as a decimal (so 40% = 0.4), from the species in your empire, which can be found on the diplomacy screen or in the research window.
superGenius is 0.2 (20%) if one or more of your scientist characters is a Super Genius, and 0 otherwise.
charBonus is your leader's bonus to research, if it exists, expressed as a decimal.
The various other terms should be self-evident, and are most easily found in the research screen. If your leader has field-specific research bonuses, they will presumably be added to the standard field-specific bonuses (though it's possible that the research screen will take care of this for you), though I did not check as my faction's leader did not have any research bonuses, field-specific or otherwise, to my knowledge.

So, to answer the question you wanted to ask but formed improperly about whether Actual Research Output is "based on" Total Empire Research Potential or Total Research Capacity, I would answer that research output is based on Total Empire Research Potential. That being said, a case can easily be made for the field-specific research capacity being the number on which the actual output is based - if you look at the formulas I gave, there is no difference between using the field-specific research capacity as the base value modified by (Total Empire Research Potential)/(Total Research Capacity) and using the Total Empire Research Potential as the base value modified by (field-specific research capacity)/(Total Research Capacity).

Edit: I should add that the example I gave is of an empire which has enormously overbuilt its lab capacity. I could have much the same actual research output by having 3 or 4 hundred thousand Energy and Construction research capacity and 3 or 4 hundred thousand High Tech research capacity instead of the approximately one million of each that I do have in that example. Just wanted to add this to make it clear that I do not need even half as much lab capacity as I have in the example given. You don't really want your lab capacity (= Total Research Capacity, sum of the research capacities for each field) to greatly exceed your unmodified Total Empire Research Potential, as otherwise you're paying for labs that you essentially are not using.

[Whiskiz]

Just because you personally couldn't understand what i was asking, doesn't mean my question was poorly formed, but either way let me break it down for you, then.

So apparently your TERP is the max amount of research you can do, split between the 3 fields of research, someone said that its basically the number of researchers available in your empire, my question is to meet this "research cap" accurately, without going over and wasting maintenance and construction costs or going under and wasting potential research, do you try to hit this cap using the TRC or the AO?

If you have TERP 360K for example, should you be, all up between the 3 fields, on 360k TRC with the AO being bonus over the current cap? or should it be 360K AO all up?

Simple question, comprehend now?

So, "can anyone actually confirm if you are supposed to build to your Total Empire Research Potential (TERP) going by your Total Research Capacity (TRC) or your Actual Output (AO)"

[Aeson]

You do not "build" your Total Empire Research Potential. That is something that comes from your empire's size. Founding colonies, growing colonies, and conquering colonies increases it. It is not affected by your Total Research Capacity or your Actual Output. Nor do I have a good way of rapidly influencing my Total Empire Research Potential - it depends on population, yes, but the relationship is unknown, conquest is the only quick way to grow population and carries significant risks especially if it involves war with another empire, and my only other option is to wait for colonies to mature. Therefore, your question is poorly formed - no matter what I do to my Total Research Capacity or my Actual Output, I cannot use these to affect my Total Empire Research Potential, and so I cannot "build" my Total Empire Research Potential based on either of these. I can build my Total Research Capacity based upon my Total Empire Research Potential, however, as the Total Research Capacity is your pre-bonus research output as long as your Total Research Capacity does not exceed your Total Empire Research Potential, and once Total Research Capacity exceeds Total Empire Research Potential the Total Research Capacity becomes a weighting term to determine your field-specific output, with your Total Empire Research Potential being your pre-bonus research output.

If you have a Total Empire Research Potential which is equal to your Total Research Capacity, then you've perfectly matched your lab capacity to what your empire can do. Actual Output is not bonus over the current cap, it's the current cap plus the bonus. The current cap on the unmodified research output can be either Total Research Capacity (in which case, congratulations, you haven't built enough lab space, though if at all possible this should never be the case) or Total Empire Research Potential, and so I did not use "min(Total Empire Research Potential, Total Research Capacity)" in place of "Total Empire Research Capacity" in the equations that I gave, though I suppose I should have defined this term.

Actual Output is the derived term in the research breakdown. Both Total Empire Research Potential and Total Research Capacity are possible caps - before modifiers - for Actual Output, and both Total Empire Research Potential and Total Research Capacity modify the Actual Output. If you want to have your research lab capacity set up to the point where none of your labs are "wasted," then you want Total Research Capacity to be as close to equal to Total Empire Research Capacity as possible. However, overbuilding labs has potential advantages due to the way research output is calculated, as if I make my Energy and Construction research capacity very large relative to my High Tech and Weapons research capacity, I can greatly focus my research output into a specific area.

Simple question, comprehend now?

I understand that you don't understand the research system as well as you think you do, since you're asking if you can "build" something that depends on your empire's population rather than if you can build up your lab capacity (your Total Research Capacity). You cannot do a thing about your Total Empire Research Potential aside from found new colonies and wait, or add large pre-existing colonies to your empire. You can build and fully customize your Total Research Capacity virtually at will based on the designs of your lab-bearing space stations, and so it makes far more sense to ask if you should build your Total Research Capacity based on your Total Empire Research Potential than it does to ask if you can "build" your Total Empire Research Potential based on your Total Research Capacity or Actual Output. Especially since Actual Output is the derived term here - neither Total Empire Research Potential nor Total Research Capacity are in any way dependent on Actual Output.

It makes a marginal amount of sense to "build" your Total Empire Research Potential to match your Total Research Capacity, but "building" your Total Empire Research Potential means colonization and waiting for population growth, or taking over established colonies (independents early on when a handful of ~100 million to ~2 billion person colonies can represent a large fraction of your empire's population, large numbers of the colonies of another empire or two later on when single large-ish colonies will not make a significant difference to your total empire population). It makes much more sense to build your Total Research Capacity to approximately match your Total Empire Research Potential, as this I can do by changing the number of labs on my spaceport(s) or adding a couple research stations of the appropriate type somewhere in my empire. When Total Research Capacity is equal to Total Empire Research Potential, you are not wasting any lab space - all the research output from those labs is being used, and all of your empire's potential research is being used. When your Total Research Capacity is greater than your Total Empire Research Potential, the labs which pushed you over the Total Empire Research Potential are in some sense wasted, as they are not contributing to the research output. They are, however, affecting the way in which your research output is split, and so they are not necessarily completely wasted.

Just because you personally couldn't understand what i was asking, doesn't mean my question was poorly formed, but either way let me break it down for you, then.

The reason why I said that your question was poorly posed was that it makes little sense to "build" your Total Empire Research Potential. This is something that you, the player, have little direct influence over, aside from allowing time to pass while founding new colonies, and aside from going to war and taking the colonies of some other player, and even then you do not know how much you'll be affecting your Total Empire Research Potential, because as far as I know, no one has ever figured out and posted an empirical formula for how your empire's population or GDP affects your Total Empire Research Potential, and the developers have never released anything showing the relationship between the two either, aside from mentions that this is actually what the Total Empire Research Potential depends upon. Since it is silly to try to "build" things that are difficult to directly or immediately influence to match something that you have direct control over with a fairly fast response to requested changes, and since your question goes further and asks whether or not you should build this thing you have difficulty influencing to match an attribute derived from this thing, I call your question poorly posed.

To answer the question you should be asking, you should be building your Total Research Capacity to approximately match your Total Empire Research Potential, and your Total Research Capacity should preferably slightly exceed your Total Empire Research Potential. Your Actual Output should not have anything to do with how you build your Total Research Capacity aside from the relative magnitudes of the various field-specific research capacities, and it's ludicrous to "build" your Total Empire Research Potential to match your Actual Output, as, unless you have no multipliers whatsoever for your research, your Actual Output matching or approximating your Total Empire Research Potential indicates that you are severely short of lab space.

[Whiskiz]

Dude seriously are you braindead? i read the first sentence "You do not "build" your Total Empire Research Potential. That is something that comes from your empire's size. Founding colonies, growing colonies, and conquering colonies increases it. It is not affected by your Total Research Capacity or your Actual Output"

and i didn't bother going any further cause you still have no idea what im talking about, just wow.

i'll break it down FURTHER for you, not that its really possible. I didnt say you build your goddamn TERP i said TERP is your research cap and do you reach the damn cap with your TRC or your AO? i CANNOT put it any easier than that, please go back to school and start learning again, you really need it. i said nothing about building the TERP, but whether you grow the damn TRC or the AO to match that number, the research potential.

Seriously if you can't understand what im asking AT ALL please dont waste time spamming my post with massive replies and equations that have nothing to do whatsoever with what im asking.

[Aeson]

do you reach the damn cap with your TRC or your AO?

You reach the cap by building your Total Research Capacity to be greater than or equal to your Total Empire Research Potential, as I already said, had you bothered to read:

If you have a Total Empire Research Potential which is equal to your Total Research Capacity, then you've perfectly matched your lab capacity to what your empire can do. Actual Output is not bonus over the current cap, it's the current cap plus the bonus. The current cap on the unmodified research output can be either Total Research Capacity (in which case, congratulations, you haven't built enough lab space, though if at all possible this should never be the case) or Total Empire Research Potential, and so I did not use "min(Total Empire Research Potential, Total Research Capacity)" in place of "Total Empire Research Capacity" in the equations that I gave, though I suppose I should have defined this term.
...
When Total Research Capacity is equal to Total Empire Research Potential, you are not wasting any lab space - all the research output from those labs is being used, and all of your empire's potential research is being used. When your Total Research Capacity is greater than your Total Empire Research Potential, the labs which pushed you over the Total Empire Research Potential are in some sense wasted, as they are not contributing to the research output. They are, however, affecting the way in which your research output is split, and so they are not necessarily completely wasted.
...
To answer the question you should be asking, you should be building your Total Research Capacity to approximately match your Total Empire Research Potential, and your Total Research Capacity should preferably slightly exceed your Total Empire Research Potential. Your Actual Output should not have anything to do with how you build your Total Research Capacity aside from the relative magnitudes of the various field-specific research capacities, and it's ludicrous to "build" your Total Empire Research Potential to match your Actual Output, as, unless you have no multipliers whatsoever for your research, your Actual Output matching or approximating your Total Empire Research Potential indicates that you are severely short of lab space.

You should be aware that building your Total Research Capacity to equal your Total Empire Research Potential is not necessarily optimal. I will further point out that the equations that I gave you do answer your question - the research outputs given are the actual output, and the TotalEmpireResearchCapacity is min(TotalEmpireResearchPotential, TotalResearchCapacity), which I forgot to define in the first post but did define in the second paragraph of the second post, which you admittedly have not bothered reading.

can anyone actually confirm if you are supposed to build to your Total Empire Research Potential (TERP) going by your Total Research Capacity (TRC) or your Actual Output (AO)

I'm so terribly sorry that I overlooked the bolded word. After all, it's so terribly difficult to rephrase this sentence in a way where your meaning could not be significantly altered by overlooking such an enormously obvious thing as a two letter word in a construction that makes sense whether or not it's there, say by wrting something such as "can anyone actually confirm if you're supposed to build your Total Research Capacity or your Actual Output to your Total Empire Research Capacity in order to maximize research output," which, by the way, is only three words and 15 characters longer than what you wrote (if you add in the acronyms to the suggested rephrasing; otherwise, it's 1 character and 0 words longer).

Perhaps in the future you should consider rephrasing your questions when you believe someone has misunderstood you, rather than repeating the same question preceded by an explanation that looks like what I thought you wanted to ask but phrased poorly, and perhaps you should avoid calling other people idiots no matter how poorly you feel they understand what you wrote. Yes, I'm sorry, I misread your question. However, responding rudely does not help matters, nor does blindly repeating exactly the same thing that was in your original post without attempting to rephrase it, as this latter invites the same misreading, and the former encourages the reader to just skim your post.

[Sieben_slith]

I went through a runaround recently, asking the same question. Everyone had a different opinion, most of them contradictory. It's simple. Your TERP increases based on population growth. Your TRC increases by building labs. Try to keep your TRC equal to your TERP by building new labs as your population increases. AO is your TRC modified by various bonuses and represents the actual amount of research you accomplish, that is, how quickly you can complete specific research projects. Don't use AO to track anything, since it changes as scientists come and go.

So, keep TRC=TERP. If it's less, you're doing less research than you could. If it's greater you're wasting a little money (and also get into some hairy calculations to see how research is split up between the three areas), but you don't need to worry about that. I end up upgrading my principal research site (usually the spaceport at my home world) several times during a game to reflect changing research needs.

Sorry, Aeson, I was writing while you were posting.

[Icemania]

ORIGINAL: Whiskiz
Dude seriously are you braindead? i read the first sentence "You do not "build" your Total Empire Research Potential. That is something that comes from your empire's size. Founding colonies, growing colonies, and conquering colonies increases it. It is not affected by your Total Research Capacity or your Actual Output"

and i didn't bother going any further cause you still have no idea what im talking about, just wow.

i'll break it down FURTHER for you, not that its really possible. I didnt say you build your goddamn TERP i said TERP is your research cap and do you reach the damn cap with your TRC or your AO? i CANNOT put it any easier than that, please go back to school and start learning again, you really need it. i said nothing about building the TERP, but whether you grow the damn TRC or the AO to match that number, the research potential.

Seriously if you can't understand what im asking AT ALL please dont waste time spamming my post with massive replies and equations that have nothing to do whatsoever with what im asking.

Whiskiz, as a new poster here, welcome; however, your response is inappropriate. This is generally a friendly place where I've seen many new posters get assistance, Aeson is a thorough and thoughtful member who was clearly trying to help.

[Whiskiz]

Was a bit overboard but after being told my question was poorly formed and then reminded of the apparent fact again later in the same post, just because that person didn't personally understand what im asking (and i mean come on, its a simple question, i still smh over the direction of this thread currently) posting massive replies anyway and with massive equations when he clearly doesn't even know what im talking about, i got a bit frustrated, but a bit too quickly i guess.

Thanks though for taking the time out to comment on my thread just to let me know the appropriatness of my response to someone else :p

At the risk of putting my foot in my mouth so to speak in terms of receiving actual simple help to a simple question on a simple forum, which doesn't look like im going to get anyway, i really have to say that i don't believe the part of posters getting assistance from what i've seen so far. 2 days and the only responses are someone who has no idea what im talking about and someone leaving a post just to swing his judgement on my response my way.

Nevermind, i'll figure it out thanks anyway and don't worry, i won't let the door hit me on the way out...

[Sieben_slith]

Checking my own game before replying to this thread, I noticed something odd. My TRC for Weapons and Energy agree with the sum of the individual stations, but High Tech does not. The stations add up to 210, but TRC=353. Must be a glitch, right?

[Aeson]

The stations add up to 210, but TRC=353. Must be a glitch, right?

That is odd. I've never noticed the research capacity for a given field to be anything other than the sum of the available lab space, or ~20K if no labs are built, and so I would tend to think it's a bug or that you've overlooked some lab capacity somewhere. Maybe write up a bug report or upload a save game or screenshot for other people to look at?

At the risk of putting my foot in my mouth so to speak in terms of receiving actual simple help to a simple question on a simple forum, which doesn't look like im going to get anyway, i really have to say that i don't believe the part of posters getting assistance from what i've seen so far. 2 days and the only responses are someone who has no idea what im talking about and someone leaving a post just to swing his judgement on my response my way.

Nevermind, i'll figure it out thanks anyway and don't worry, i won't let the door hit me on the way out...

Your question was answered with a reasonable degree of civility by several people in this thread, in spite of the rudeness with which you responded to the first response to your question. If you would like to continue to believe that you have been wronged, you are more than welcome to do so, but I rather suspect that the majority of the people who read this forum will not agree with your assessment, especially if you continue to maintain the appearance of believing yourself to be fully in the right.

If you go to anyone for assistance in the future, especially if it is to someone who is posting on an internet forum and who therefore may not be in the same timezone or have a similar sleep schedule to your own, it would be wise to not immediately become hostile if the first response doesn't exactly fit the question that you posed. Yes, perhaps I went somewhat far in criticizing the manner in which you posed your question when the problem was that I had misread it, but you have already been given an apology for that, despite its sarcastic delivery. This does not excuse the level of hostility that you have directed towards me when I was clearly attempting to help. You have further responded with more hostility than warranted to Icemania, who, posting after your question had already been answered several times, criticized your response to an attempt to help but offered you a welcome to the forum. Perhaps you should have that chip on your shoulder examined, as it's clearly affecting your ability to engage with other people.

[Whiskiz]

Thanks for the response Sieben, i guess i missed it. I found the same, alot of contradiction when trying to find the answer.

So you think reach TERP based on TRC and not AO? It does make more sense, its just after seeing the TERP highlighted in red and AO highlighted in red also, i start to second guess every time lol.

But i will do either way, and even if you are meant to base it off your AO it would just mean a bit extra thats wasted in maintenance and construction costs on labs rather than basing it off AO and potentially being wrong, losing out on some potential research with TRC, thanks again.

Aeson, sorry for replying the way i did but as clearly shown from the response by Sieben it was a simple question from which i got a simple answer, no being told it was a poorly formed question twice, no massive walls of text and massive equations that had nothing to do with what i was asking, on top.

"Your question was answered with a reasonable degree of civility by several people in this thread"

It was really only answered by two people you being one, even though you had no idea what i was asking, and blamed me and the way i formed my question :p

Thanks for trying still.

Anyway I wonder why, when no-one is able to confirm say from the games manual or developers etc, why most people seem to choose TRC over AO being the answer though, guess there has to be some truth to it for one reason or another.

[Aeson]

Anyway I wonder why most people seem to choose TRC over AO being the answer though, guess there has to be some truth to it for one reason or another.

Because with Actual Output you probably need to get a calculator out to see if you've reached the limit. With Total Research Capacity, the game gives you the numbers you need for comparison immediately. You can technically evaluate it either way, but it's much easier when looking at Total Research Capacity than when looking at Actual Output.

Take the example I gave in the first reply. The empire in question has a 47% bonus to Energy and Construction research, a 36% bonus to High Tech research, and no bonus to Weapons research. My empire had 634K research potential, lab space for 23K/1050K/1000K research capacity, and an actual output of 15K/991K/873K actual research output. If I want to check if I've met my research potential using the actual output, I need to multiply my research potential by my overall research bonus of 2.1, which gets me to 1331K potential research output, and then multiply this again by the weighted average of the field-specific research multipliers, which gets me to 1331K*(1*23/2073 + 1.47*1050/2073 + 1.36*1000/2073) = 1879K total research output based on the given empire potential, bonuses, and research allocation, and then compare this to the sum of the field-specific actual outputs of (15K + 991K + 873K) = 1879K total research output. Equivalently, I could compare the product of the research potential and the overall research bonus to the sum of the field-specific Actual Output values after accounting for the bonus to that field, i.e. 634K*2.1 ?= 15K/1 + 991K/1.47 + 873K/1.36; both sides of the equation work out to about 1331K. I could instead compare this to the total lab capacity and see that when my total lab capacity is at least equal to the listed empire research potential, I don't gain any benefit to the total amount of research conducted (after accounting for variation in total output due to field-specific bonuses) by adding additional lab space. Technically, both methods are equivalent; both of them will tell you to stop building more lab space at the same point. One of these methods is significantly easier than the other, however.

It can also be fairly clearly seen from that example that the research potential is not on a per field basis, as in both High Tech and Energy and Construction, I have significantly more than the research potential limit, and yet my research in each of those fields clearly falls far short of the value which would be expected had the research potential been on a per field basis, and it can also be seen that lab space greater than the research potential was not useful. If you were to want to test in game where the lab limit is reached, I would suggest starting on a pre-warp setting and building up your lab capacity slowly. You should note that for as long as your total lab capacity is less than your research potential, your actual research output looks like (field-specific lab capacity)*(research bonus)*(field bonus), and that when you match your lab capacity to your research potential, additional labs are not useful except for refining the research allocation.

You can also come to the conclusion that either methodology will provide you with the same answer by examining the equations that I provided you in my first reply, remembering the definition that I provided in my second reply when I noticed that I hadn't defined a term, namely that TotalEmpireResearchCapacity = min(TotalEmpireResearchPotential, TotalResearchCapacity).

Feel free to use either method to answer the question of "when do I not need to continue building labs." Just remember that one methodology is considerably easier to do without a calculator than the other is.

[NephilimNexus]

Sadly, I can only afford to produce about 10% of my total research potential, and so it took nearly ten years to reach tech 7 in everything. Maybe I need to put more emphasis on research?

[Whiskiz]

Damn yeah i guess so, if your meant to reach your TERP with your TRC, that is around 90% research not being used indeed.

[Aeson]

Sadly, I can only afford to produce about 10% of my total research potential, and so it took nearly ten years to reach tech 7 in everything.

Fine. Perhaps I should have phrased it as a way to determine the point at which you gain no further benefit from building additional labs, beyond adjusting the research allocation, rather than the point at which you no longer need to build labs.

Maybe I need to put more emphasis on research?

Clearly. You don't have enough research until the amount of time taken to discover everything becomes negative.

Damn yeah i guess so, if your meant to reach your TERP with your TRC, that is around 90% research not being used indeed.

Even if he or she meant to reach it by actual output, he or she is still missing out on about 94% of the research that he or she could be performing. With the multipliers NephilimNexus has, if he or she were able to reach full potential by actual output, that empire would have a total research output of about 1.5 billion, under the assumption that that x19 research bonus from pirate facilities is already included in the listed potential. If it's not, then that empire has a maximum potential output on evenly distributed research somewhere in the neighborhood of 29 billion research, and the ~90000K output NephilimNexus has in that image is merely 0.3% of the actual potential output.

If you want to reach your total empire research potential by actual output, then you need to consider how the bonuses you have affect your potential output. Otherwise, you have not actually reached your potential output at all, except in the sense of having numbers that add up to be something similar to the potential even though these numbers aren't directly related to the potential.

Another thing which is interesting about that is that it appears that the research bonus from the Super Genius scientist is not being applied, or at least isn't being applied in the same manner as it would be were the empire a normal empire rather than a pirate empire. A normal empire with the research bonuses and research capacities listed would have about 35283K weapons research, 33291K energy and construction research, and 37665K high tech research for its actual output. This is not including the x19 research bonus from pirate facilities, which I can only imagine is being included in the research potential, because it certainly isn't going into the multipliers on the existing capacity. NephilimNexus, you might want to put together a bug report that includes that save game, as your Super Genius does not appear to be affecting your research output properly, and I have no idea where that x19 research bonus from pirate facilities is going, unless it's what inflated your research potential like that (which would be inconsistent with how all the displayed research bonuses are applied in normal empires, and with how all the displayed research bonuses aside from the Super Genius bonus are being applied to get the listed actual outputs in the image you uploaded).

(Also, the field-specific science bonus from the leader is multiplicative with all the other bonuses to that field, rather than additive with the scientist and location bonus.)

[Whiskiz]

As far as i know and from what i have read, none of those bonuses besides whats highlighted in green and red underneath the TERP (for example the +15% from human race) actually increase the TERP "cap" but im not sure where those bonuses are then going whether its TRC AO or a black hole somewhere, but im pretty sure those don't either calculate in to show a higher TERP cap, nor is used to calculate off the shown TERP cap to work out the true increased cap (like the 15% bonus to this cap, TERP X Bonus i.e 774398 X 1.15 to factor that 15% racial bonus in, pretty sure the bonuses below this don't work the same way or affect TERP in any way)

unless i have misread what i have looked up.

[Aeson]

None of the bonuses listed in the research screen are included within the listed total empire research potential for normal empires. This is something that is very easy to check with a bit of multiplication while examining the research screen of a normal empire, with or without sufficient capacity to meet the potential output. However, NephilimNexus is playing a pirate empire with a listed 1900% general research bonus and a 20% general research bonus from a Super Genius scientist. Neither of these show up within the actual output, and based on how normal empires work, at the very least the Super Genius bonus should show up as a multiplier on the total capacity (since total capacity is less than potential) when you do the computation to determine actual output.

Basically, what should be happening is that NephilimNexus should see an Actual Output for Weapons Research of

Code: Select all

   (18000K [Weapons lab capacity])*(1 + 0.15 [Human] + 0.2 [Super Genius] + 19 [pirate facilities])*(1.1 [Leader])*(1.32 [Scientists and location]) ~= 532000K

research in Weapons. What we see that NephilimNexus has is 30056K research in Weapons, which is consistent with something like

Code: Select all

   (18000K [Weapons lab capacity])*(1 + 0.15 [Human])*(1.1 [Leader])*(1.32 [Scientists and location]) ~= 30056K

Now, maybe pirate facilities are not meant to be counted in the multiplier like this, and so that +19 [pirate facilities] factor should be zero, but that would still say that NephilimNexus should have about 35000K Weapons research output, if pirate research multipliers aside from pirate facilities follow the same rules as those for normal empires, because for normal empires, that +20% research output from the Super Genius does get applied in this manner.

Looking at the way the math works out, it is fairly clear that it is the Super Genius bonus, not the Human species bonus, which is missing from the research multipliers, and there's nothing anywhere that could explain where that 1900% bonus from pirate facilities is going, unless it's part of what produced the nearly 800000K research potential (which would mean that if NephilimNexus were to create a normal empire with the same territory, that empire would have a research potential of around 40000K).

You can do the same thing for the other two research categories, and you'll see the same issue. Including the +15% human multiplier as you would for a normal empire but leaving off the Super Genius bonus gets you an error of no more than about 0.4% from the displayed actual output. Including the Super Genius bonus but leaving off the species multiplier gets you an error of nearly 5% from the displayed output. Averaging the Super Genius bonus with the species multiplier gets you a result about 2% to 2.5% off from the displayed value, and moreover averaging the two bonuses is inconsistent with how the bonuses are applied for normal empires. As such, I would say that it appears that the Super Genius bonus is not being applied, or if it is being applied, it's not being applied the way it would be were NephilimNexus playing a normal empire. And no matter how much you fudge the numbers, that 1900% bonus is nowhere to be seen, except if it had been incorporated into the research potential.

[Dante Fierro]

As a NOOB to the game, the whole "Total Empire Research Potential" by far is one of the most confusing, poorly documented and explained aspects of the game. Even after following this forum thread, I'm still confused as hell.

[Bingeling]

Yes, it is a tad confusing...

The key when deciding number of labs is that the 3 white (unmodified) values in total must be higher than the total empire research potential shown top right. If they are not you are not getting maximum output.

So from the image in the opening post of this thread: http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=3170698

(720 + 600 + 600) must be higher than 721.

Which it is by a massive margin. In addition notice that his research is distributed towards weapon research (720 is higher than the two 600s, proportional distribution is used).

The distributed research in each branch is subject to the various bonuses listed, and ends up with the number below. In the image the number is high due to massive race and government bonuses.