Research Facilities

[Gareth_Perkins]

Something I've been fiddling about with as an alternative to direct tech investment:

Research Facility
Construction Cost: 8
Upkeep Cost: 1/2
Defence: 1
Attrition: 3
Notes: Allows the Empire to invest up to (system capacity - system population) in tech investment per turn. Each facility may always invest a minimum of 1 EP per turn.

The way expenditure works means that largely unexplored systems provide the most research opportunities - but of course they're hardest to build... It could also be retrofitted as an ability for "science vessels" who will gain most benefit by hanging around in uninhabited systems,

Any thoughts?

I've also been trying to fiddle around with the FASB Notable Officers rule because there are a lot of Sci-fi settings I think this would be very good for (especially the stuff about rank and the odd incompetent officer...),

[mriddle]

What about taking away tech research as a expense per se and creating facilities that produce tech investment
ie
Facility Cost 4 maint 2 produces 2 Tech / turn
Mega Facility Cost 20 Maint 4 produces 5 Tech/turn

this will prevent players from yo-yoing research..

Mike

[Gareth_Perkins]

That could work...

I was trying to create a situation where it was better to have research stations out on the frontier (which makes them more vulnerable to industrial espionage/sabotage - which I was going to restrict to targeting research facilities) which seems more in keeping with a lot of sci-fi backgrounds,

[the old star-trek "science outposts" spring to mind]

Whereas more explored systems are then less valuable for research purposes,

[mriddle]

That could work...

I was trying to create a situation where it was better to have research stations out on the frontier (which makes them more vulnerable to industrial espionage/sabotage - which I was going to restrict to targeting research facilities) which seems more in keeping with a lot of sci-fi backgrounds,

[the old star-trek "science outposts" spring to mind]

Whereas more explored systems are then less valuable for research purposes,

That almost seems to be a "depleteable resource" idea

when system is discovered it has X bonus tech points that match the investment of the player, but X decreases over time/investment

[Gareth_Perkins]

Hmmmmm,

That would allow me to (for example) make X exceptionally high near odd interstellar phenomena (Nebulae, odd star types, etc) which would be quite fitting to the background (and might work better than my initial idea because these systems often have poor Capacity),

I wanted to keep the facilities (or something like it) because merely having facilities will give players incentive to use them each turn (otherwise the maintenance cost is wasted EP) but of course mounting maintenance costs will give some incentive to only carry the facilities that they need, and so in effect their research expenditure should be flatter across each year.

(a big splurge on R&D at the year end requires more facilities which cost more in maintenance across the year than a faction with fewer facilities making small payments each month),

[mriddle]

Hmmmmm,


I wanted to keep the facilities (or something like it) because merely having facilities will give players incentive to use them each turn (otherwise the maintenance cost is wasted EP) but of course mounting maintenance costs will give some incentive to only carry the facilities that they need, and so in effect their research expenditure should be flatter across each year.

(a big splurge on R&D at the year end requires more facilities which cost more in maintenance across the year than a faction with fewer facilities making small payments each month),

Exactly, this is what I call yo-yoing the tech investment.. the game encourages yo-yoing because, tech investment in month 12 is equal to tech investment in month 1. so if I delay buying tech until month 12, I get the use of the money until then.

[Gareth_Perkins]

Sure, but if you are limited on your per-month expenditure on R&D by the number of facilities you own then it becomes less economical to do that without having to be too constraining and making R&D facilities too expensive to have sitting around "idling",

By way of example: If I want 120 tech investment by the end of the year and (for the sake of simplicity) an R&D facility has an upkeep of 2 and can produce a maximum of 5RP per turn,
* If my research is distributed evenly I only need two facilities (costing 48EP upkeep plus 120EP research costs)
* If I want to yo-yo and buy all of my research in the last turn I need 24 facilities (costing 576EP in upkeep and 120EP research costs)

Obviously there are a distribution of cases which fall in-between,

So upkeep doesn't necessarily need to directly feed into the R&D pool - the natural desire to keep costs down will do it for us, and in turn this creates a little extra flexibility in terms of over and underpaying R&D as well as taking a "tech holiday" when times merit by seriously cutting down on R&D costs without necessarily dismantling the facilities,

This was my rational for making the facilities upkeep pretty low whilst making the R&D payments voluntary up to a cap of X (whatever),

[jygro]

Both ideas have a lot of merit. I never liked the idea that you could 'buy' tech research all in the final month once you knew that you didn't need those EPs for ships and the like and still get a 'decent' roll for new technology.

For simplicity sake, I lthink that a Research Facility (which costs so much and has a small maintenance) generates the ability to generate reseach EP up to a certain amount (I think 5 is a wonderful number for this).

You could make it so the cost of multiple RF increase in price depending on the number of current facilities, but the maintenence cost stays the same.

1 to 2: normal cost per RF
3 to 6: 1.5x cost per RF
7 to 12: 2x cost per RF
13 to 20: 2.5x cost per RF
21+ : 3x cost per RF

Now along those same lines, I think an empire should be able to overtax the system (and generate more than 5 EP per research facility), but it should be at a cost (either in EP cost or possible destruction of a facility).

As a side note, perhaps the number of research facilities is the maximum number of research projects that a nation can be researching at one time.

I do like the idea of science station generating more research on frontier worlds. What if it was a +x% modifier to the number of EP spent or something?

So a science station in a system that was a CAP 12, but census 1 would give a 11% bonus to the number of EP spent in a turn. If there were 3 sush science stations in three like systems, they would combine to give a +33% bonus. Now an empire that spent 20 EP in a turn would get 27 EP for research purposes.

Hmm. I might be on to something I like here...
-Bren

[Gareth_Perkins]

I do like the idea of science station generating more research on frontier worlds. What if it was a +x% modifier to the number of EP spent or something?

Yeah - I think this is almost necesary otherwise an Empire will just build all of its facilities on its homeworld...

So a science station in a system that was a CAP 12, but census 1 would give a 11% bonus to the number of EP spent in a turn. If there were 3 sush science stations in three like systems, they would combine to give a +33% bonus. Now an empire that spent 20 EP in a turn would get 27 EP for research purposes.
-Bren

This was sort of my original thinking - but I do like the idea of certain star systems giving a research bonus (which creates opportunities for lone facilities in systems otherwise uninhabitable because of the background radiation or black hole or whatever...)

Where you thinking that the percentage bonus is to ALL RP the empire spends or just those "spent" by the facilities in question - it could be argued that the data provided by these frontier bases advances research in all facilities. That could create some interesting situations with some research stations in "secure" locations as well as some on the frontier.

This in turn would eliminate the possibility of totally screwing another empire by sabotaging all of his research facilities - but still leave the potential to seriously reduce the ability to generate RP, because those frontier bases are so useful,

*/ Edit: Also ancient ruins could grant a +5% bonus to RP in much the same way if there is a facility in the system

Although looking at it, these numbers are a little high - how about +2% for up to 25% census, +1% for up to 50%, +0% above that and +2% for ancient ruins (per level) - asses the bonus on each turns investment, but round down

In all cases lose the bonus if the system is not in good order/*