Explicit test on research system

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tkobo
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Post by tkobo »

Okay, i see what you said now. I misread that. :oops:
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George Geczy
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Post by George Geczy »

Thanks tkobo (and others) for the comments on this thread. I haven't had the chance to absorb the details of your tests, but I've bookmarked it.

As I've just mentioned in reply to Eric in his other thread, the research model attempts to accomplish a lot and in the end has become a 'black box' where so many variables interact that it isn't clear what is causing what result.

If we made research "independent from the economy" it would be a lot simpler, easier to understand, but certainly less realistic. But hey, it is a game after all, maybe that approach isn't a bad choice.

The question is where to make the balance - where to decide between the simplicity verus the effects of outside elements.

For example, consider the following research model:

1 research point costs $1 Million.
You generate 3 research points per day per research center.
You use accumulated research points to 'buy' technologies, each of which has a predefined point value. Tech level increases are also 'bought' by Research points.

Simple, and everyone knows what's going on. No confusion.

But, look at what's missing:

- No limit to research spending based on population size or economy size; if Germany gives Estonia a big pile of money, Estonia can employ 150% of its population in high tech research - "yes, you too can design a modern weapons system at home in your spare time!".

- No 'bell curve' of efficiency of focussing on less projects, or penalties for doing too many;

- No consideration for literacy, research efficiency, regional economic and social conditions, etc

I'm not really happy about leaving all those 'reality' bits out.

-- George.
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Post by szabfer »

That is good to see that you don't protect everything with this "reality" slogan. We agree that this is a game...

Your idea about the research points are really sympatic for me. In theory, lets play with it - how to solve the issues what you raised:

No limit to research spending based on population size or economy size

- Tie the number of the buildable research facilities to the population size (modified by literacy).
- Economy problem: if you have small economy, you don't have money. Or maybe you have for one or two projects (because you got it from someone) but it will run out fast. And don't forget: you have to build the research facilities first....
- Regarding the Estonia issue: if you want to be realistic, you may imagine how many well trained scientists can be hired from foreign countries to help you out. If I know well, that is how the arabian science worked and the americans did something similar in the past. If you have money, you can buy the necessary human resource.

No 'bell curve' of efficiency of focussing on less projects, or penalties for doing too many;
- actually with this hypotethic method you run only one project in any time: that is what you will buy when you accumulate the research points.

While this seems to be a limit it is not a big change to the current SR2010 situation: even if we have the possibility to run more projects in parallel, it doesn't worth it -> the players will run max 1 or 2 projects. Same result, but in the hypothetic model we understand how it work. In the current situation, nobody knows it exactly.

- No consideration for literacy, research efficiency, regional economic and social conditions, etc

- Literacy: modify the number of buildable research facilities by this. See above.

- Efficiency: every point cost a little bit more money. Simple and understandable and you can indicate clearly to the player. Even you can modify the number of the accumulated points with several factors (efficiency, literacy, gdp, social stuff etc) in the background, but you can write the following info to the players: "you invest X million dollars and you accumulate Y points per day". Everyone will know, how much time he needs to get the next tech - woww, you dont have to deal with the misleading estimations :)

- social conditions: I think, it should not affect directly the research. The social conditions have effect on the economy, thus have effect on the money what you have thus have effect how much money can you invest.
Last edited by szabfer on Feb 09 2006, edited 2 times in total.
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Post by szabfer »

It is good to think on such problems... I don't want o work now :) How can I explain it to my boss....
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Post by BigStone »

szabfer wrote:I don't want o work now :) How can I explain it to my boss....
Buy another copy of the game and give it to your boss... :lol:
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Post by szabfer »

:lol:
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Post by bergsjaeger »

I been testing the research since the last update myself. There's one thing I noticed. Depending on the region I played as most of the time I can finish the entire tech tree within 7 years. This result was always with regions that are major counties. (US, Germany, France etc.). But with smaller regions like Georgia in the Russia scenario takes 13 years to finish the tech tree. The result is always the same. Everytime my spending was to the max and eff spending set to 60% and the technolgy set to 40% as for tech years them seem to rocket by even with no money set for the tech year. Built research centers for every 2M ppl like always. I even noticed that at that setting I can research 3 unit techs and a major tech all at one time and the eff. doesn't drop much. The funniest thing I seen was being able to research the B-2A bomber in 20 days. And this was on the US South East Scenario. And in the scenario before that I researched 10 techs. Doesn't seem like much but with just 5 centers and 500M spent in reseach that's alot. :lol: well to me anyways. As for the US SE scenario I have researched 20 techs or so and not even a year into the scenario. I think I found a pattern better than the one I had with update 3.
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Post by Journier »

Playing the WORLD scenario, I was cutting industries etc, to lower my GDP and i got it down to around 20,000 "as north america" And sadly, my research was worthless at that point.


my research efficiency hit 44 % at i think 20,500.

when i brought my GDP back up to 34,000 my research was around 70% efficiency.

it was a waste of time so i just quit researching all together. since i had a majority of my techs already finished before the whole research efficiency died.

Research shouldnt even touch anything other than your money, and employ people as scientists etc.

i dont see the reasoning behind it linked with GDP,
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Post by BigStone »

Journier wrote:i dont see the reasoning behind it linked with GDP,
A doctor earns more then a butcher.... :wink:
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Post by Balthagor »

every dollar you spend affects the GDP/c. You put more money into the system and ppl on average get paid more...
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Post by Journier »

no, its linked to the actual GDP/C

I know that people get paid more but THE EFFICIENCY is tied to the GDP/C

i guess i wasnt clear about what i meant.

why does the efficiency even get linked to the GDP/C?

when i was at 40 something percent, i put my research on 12 trillion a year :)

The efficiency didnt rise faster than the GDP rose. its definately linked for some weird reason.

I said in my last post that research should employ people etc as it does already, thats great, but why have the efficiency tied to GDP?

and what if i as the dictator of the North american scenario, wished to drop the cost of living? so that people making 20,000-30,000 a year were doctors? that would be great wouldnt it?

I had inflation down etc, thats a nice sign the dollar was worth more than most other nations etc.
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tkobo
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Post by tkobo »

My experience points to an effect that the gdp/c has on the research numbers.

1) as the gdp/c rises so does the maxium spending level for research and the current spending level if you have it locked.
a) this means your efficiency will rise - becuase as more money is put into the total research spending more money is allocated to the efficiency sub catagory as well.
b)Add in the cap and the resulting rise in efficiency often gets a larger boost than the other sub catagories of research spending.


Now as your gdp/c goes down, the opposite happens.Total spending max and current goes down,efficiency goes down, etc...

So even if the efficiency itself was not directly tied (which i am not totally sure of either way) to the gdp/c, its still indirectly tied thru the rise in spending and max spending tie to the gdp/c
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bergsjaeger
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Post by bergsjaeger »

That's true to everything u said there tkobo. Been studying research for a month now. I had my GDP go up in the 50k today and had my eff in research reach 238% and was putting over 30B into research. But keep in mind I had 75 research centers too. And I was able to finish the tree again in 6 and half years. Seems that's the min. amount of years its possible in but I'm shooting for at least 5 years.
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tkobo
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Post by tkobo »

Hhahahahah,I love to see people push a system to its max :lol:
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Post by bergsjaeger »

:lol: 5 years is possible because I haven't pushed it to the max yet. But it's getting there little by little. The only thing that holds me back is the amount of money. If I can get enough at one time then I might even have the tree done less than 5 years.
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