What's your research strategy?

[Psillycyber]

One consequence I've found of the research interest mechanic is that it makes it worthwhile to devote ultra-poor and even poor worlds to nothing but research. Use your whole empire one turn to jumpstart research on a project, and then let just slowly accumulate research from there with research coming from only your factory-less poor world.

If you used a poor world to build factories and ships and stuff, it would only be half as effective. If you use a factory-less poor world to build tripled research, it becomes 3/5ths as effective as a normal world with factories, which is better than half. (You multiply by three due to the research interest bonus, and divide by 5 due to the fact that with factories you would be producing 5 times as much production per population point). This assumes zero cleanup costs. If you are spending a lot of your factory output on cleanup, like you do at the beginning of the game, then a poor world becomes even more effective when devoted to research only.

If you want to talk about ultra-poor worlds...well, when building factories it is only 1/3rd as effective. When building tripled research without factories, it is once again 3/5ths as effective as a normal world with factories, which is faaaaar better than 1/3rd.

Plus, you get immediate payoff from the technology research (and often savings when building ships at all of your other planets), whereas factory construction takes time to pay off.

The moral of the story? Only when you have significant factory cost upgrades and cleanup upgrades does it become worth it to build factories at poor and ultra-poor worlds. Otherwise, you are better off making them your steady research centers, with a little help from other planets for the initial investments.

[SvenBent]

So currently this is what im doing

An yturn after i discover a tech and thereby start a new technology research i put all/most of my planets on research for a huge starting boost.
after that i mostly just dripple in around 7.5% from while otherwise focussing on expansion/improvements/warfare.
Exceptionally i always have my finnished artifacts plannets doing research which will in somegames cover that 7.5% entirelly

The increase form the bonus seems to narrow down the gap for a full invested research very fast

Question: at the very first tunr of the game what do people generally do here?
start usign all ressoruce from the fist turn into resserach adn then ride the 7.5% or focus on getting factories up for a bit first?

[SvenBent]

IMO the only field worth starting on the first turn is Planetology, and I very regularly put 1 point to see what's available. I want to have ER3 by 2025, and I want to research T10 before it, so if both are available I start on T10 right away. If only T10 is available I start a few turns later, whenever appropriate to maximize the economic growth. If only ER3 is available then I start even later so that it pays off notably better when it comes off than if I had built factories instead.

The only other techs I'd consider starting before the factories are well on the way are the range techs and/or Barren - if there is a particularly nice planet I'd like to colonize, most notably rich/ultra rich. One of those and you are half a Klackon

Why not Improved Industrial Tech 9 or Improved Eco Restoration ?
Takes to long for the PP savings breaks even with the RP cost ?

Just thinking out load here:
IDT9 take around 360RP or 288 if you are psilon
Calculation in that psilon 50% RP bonus that would be 192 RP needed input
putting in 38 at start and riding that 7.5% you should have it after 10 rounds for a total cost of 89RP

did not count in the percentage to obtain the tech phase though

hmm putting in 38 per turn you get it after 5 turns and spend 135 but that only if you adjust/lower the last two rounds to only be 1RP above the bonus and the last round solely riding the bonus. not lowering you still complete base cost the same turn but you do have RP in surplus so you end at a higher Obtain percentage

Thats almost another 50% in research efficiency being patient and riding the researcher bonus

gotta play a bit more around with math for better comparisons

[SvenBent]

Thank you for your reply.

I'm still very much trying to tweak my start of the game as I know when I played back when MoO was new, I was horrible at it.
I pretty much just let it work up to max factories and then got all population up before doing much else ( actually i think i might even have done it reverse at the very beginning)
Having almost no english skills back then did not help on this game :D

Last year I brought up MoO agian for nostalgia reasons and want to improve my game play a lot. I used to focus in getting Robotic control 3 as fast as possible to increase my production but i didn't know a bout the increase cost of building the factories. so now since I'm gone away from "perfecting" one planet at at time to a huge expansion bases tarting strategy I've tried to focus more on IT9 and ECO or reduced wasted to help my planets grow faster. i mstil la bit confused if the increase price kick in immediately or only after you have refitted.


This is off top of my head so I'm probably wrong on numbers
ECO3 is level 5 tech so its 5^5x40=1000 points

I cant recall what your starting production is but i beleive it around 40 (again i mgiht be horrible wrong)
if you use 2 rounds of 40 to put into ressearch and ride the bonus yyou should hit 1352.0 after 16 turns for a total cost of 502

considering I still mostly play Psilon I would have it at after 13 turns for a total cost of 298 (40 + 40+ 6.0 + 7.0 + 9.0 + 11.0 + 13.0 + 16.0 + 20.0 + 24.0 + 30.0 + 37.0 + 45.0)


Would you still consider waiting to get ECO ?
When do you normally start looking at reaching ?

[SvenBent]

Thank you a lot of your info again i will read you lets play once i get home from work.

I'm just trying to figure out how to got an optimal start boost/growth because

1: its pretty much the most identical time of the game from game to game.
2: I'm all alone at this time so no real factors beside what i do counts in.
3: I tend to maybe over focus on my start in 4x games. I think a good start makes it easier keep a lead or not fall to much behind in the game.

[SvenBent]

So following your bulrathi play it seems like you prefer Gatling gun bonus riding research (I'm awesome at namegiving) plan. Where instead instead of focusing on one, you seed one and ride it, and then seed another and ride it.
I've read plenty of place that it was unoptimal to research one thing at a time bin my mind i didn't get it. but reading your play through made me sit down and do some calculations with excel
seed values 1000 and wanted reseach value is 5000 ( picked at random)

by the Gatling gun method:
turn 1: seed 1000rp in tech1
turn 2: riding 75rp in tech1 and seeding 925 in tech2
Then just ride the bonus(s)
Tech1 hits 5050 after 9 turns
Tech 2 hits 4657.0 after 10 turns ( close but no cigar) and 5704.0 after 11 turn


Double seeding one tech:
Turn1: seed 1000rp in tech1
Turn2: Ride 75rp bonus on tech1 and seed and additional 925 into tech1
after that just riding the bonus
Tech1 hits 4835.0 after 6 turns ( close but lets accept it to bias it against the gatling method_

Turn 7: seed 1000rp in tech2
Turn 8: Ride 75rp bonus on tech2 and seed and additional 925 into tech2
after that just ride the bonus
Tech1 hits 4835.0 after 6 turns ( close but lets accept it to bias it against the gatling method)

Even biasing it agianst the gatling method we get our 2 tech up and running 2 turns laters but we also seed twice as much RO during this time
the total cost


Gatling:
Tech 1: 2350.0
Tech 2: 2518.0
Total : 4868

One at a time:
Tech 1:2895.0
Tech 2:2895.0
Total : 5790

off cause this is purely a numbers game and external factors might change how you want to research.

I've been playing so inefficient with my research :D

[SvenBent]

yeah I get the 2% base cost for 1% chance of discovery. my cost estimate above was based on input cost aka not including the bonus research so i could which one was most efficient. on actual cost of production.
it just never clicked for me before cause in my mind i keep thinking: ( 7.5% of X) + (7.5% of y) is the same as 7.5% of (x+y).
Its just that the delayed time to harvest bigger and bigger bonus, because you delay the "latancy" of a discoveries but improving it on "bandwidth" didn't occur to me before I plotted it into my excel sheet. and now off cause it makes perfect sense.

I made a excel hell so i can put in my seed values and see exactly what i need to put in each turn to maximize the research bonus. maybe i should just try out v 1.4 instead

[HansLemurson]

How much benefit does this give you compared to just hitting the '=' button in the research screen and keeping the science funding relatively steady?

[Ray F]

How much benefit does this give you compared to just hitting the '=' button in the research screen and keeping the science funding relatively steady?

I think it's pretty significant. It's like putting in the maximum amount into your 401K that still gets the highest-match, but you have six 401Ks AND the amount of the match is based on your initial first-paycheck investment. So yeah, you put your entire Week 1 check into the 1st 401K, then only the minimum needed to get the maximum matching.

Since hitting the '=' button never gives you that big initial investment, the amount of matching RP you get in each category is a lot lower.

Just to be clear, this is absolutely a min/max exploit of internal game mechanics. 7.5% is an internal number used in MOO1, and it seems intended to reward someone who spreads their research out, even when unevenly, as opposed to someone who just always puts 100% into the tech they want the sooner.

I really hope the game designers didn't intend for players to whip out their calculators and calculate the optimal number if ticks needed to put into each category. For this reason, it most definitely won't be in ROTP!

[SvenBent]

How much benefit does this give you compared to just hitting the '=' button in the research screen and keeping the science funding relatively steady?

it depends on your goal. if you goal is maximum ressearch over time the bonus gives you very little
but if you goal is maximmum resserach with the smallest cost ( to free up ressorcues for other use) the Ressreavh vonus is huge.
it easily give you a more than 50% boost in ressearch. now you might not think that is that much but if you do it with psilon you are getting and enermous ressreach potential boost

Psilons allrady get an 87% reserach boost. with and additionel 50% you end up on 180.5% reaarch bonus or almost triple that of other races...

if you are lookn for something simple and dont wnat ot use your calculator etc etc use this simpel gatling guns trategy


turns 1:
Pile all ressearce into on areas

turns 2"
keep 8% ( aka 4 tick) in that areaa and pile the rest into another area

tunrs 3
keep the 8% in you started ressrach ares from turn 1 and 2 and pile the rest into a third areas

do that until you are working on all and then you cna use the = if you want to

once you get a new technology something. considere that resserach area clear and go ahed and pile everything into that areas keeiping 4 ticks on all active ressearh areas.


in short
Pile all you can into one tech area
keep 4 tick fo continued resserach
Gatling your way through free ressearch area



@Ray F
You can say that about everygame.. its nto a matter of the game designer intende it but all games are based on math so calculation it will always give more precise answerd thna just going by feeling

you can do the same in any game really
FFXI 8 page spreadsheet to maximize damage again certain enemies.
CIV 2 knowing to have a minimum of 21 production in each city ara as it becomes 52 once you are ind endgame which is enough for some military units and building a caravan/freight each turn to get science and gold.
UFO enemy unknow. maximizing income

I wouldn't consider it at bad thing they did it that way. just because some people pic out a calculator to optimize it.
on the contrary a lot of ppl enjoy their games that way