Bring Back Specialized Research Buildings

[AlazkanAssassin]

Please bring back specialized research buildings. I think that they were good, and I miss being able to make a decision to focus on one of the research branches.
I suggest that the current upgraded research buildings (the ones with rare resource requirements) should be replaced with specialized buildings.

Engineering research complex: 2 researcher jobs and 3 “engineering researcher” jobs, requires rare crystals.
Society research complex: 2 researcher plus 3 society researcher jobs, requires rare gasses
Physics research complex: 2 researcher jobs, plus 3 physicist researcher jobs, requires volitile motes.

Advanced Research complexes of each type would take more of the rare resource, and add 3 more of the specialized researcher jobs.

 

[M@ni@c]

I agree.
So how are the Svartalfar doing these days?

 

[AlazkanAssassin]

I agree.
So how are the Svartalfar doing these days?

They still spend a lot of time dominating lesser species, but now they have a whole galaxy to dominate.

 

[tobias.mb]

That seems unnessesarily comlicated.
Just bring back the old research policies for +20% in one field for -10% in the other two.

 

[AlazkanAssassin]

That seems unnessesarily comlicated.
Just bring back the old research policies for +20% in one field for -10% in the other two.

That nominal 30% difference never seemed like enough of a difference to matter much. Could we get those, plus additional policies with higher numbers? +100%, -50% to the other two ought to do it.

Alternatively, we could have policies that change the basic production of every one of your “researcher” jobs from 4/4/4 to 6/3/3, or even 8/2/2!

 

[bmt17]

I agree that adding three new specialized researcher pop jobs would be unnecessarily complicated, though not a big deal to implement one thing I've noticed with with mods after the population rework is that the multitudes of new jobs that many have added just make things extremely cluttered on the population screen. I'm hoping that eventually everything will be more streamlined once authors are used to working with the new system.

Maybe expand on the repeatable +x% to research field techs, or add per planet policies to boost individual fields.

 

[KingAlamar]

Instead of outright replacement why not allow for some form of a branching upgrade? I.E. you get to pick the current "balanced" building or you can choose to specialize the building.

Given that in every playthough I've had in 2.2.X that Social Science production has completely outpaced Physics & Engineering research it would be nice if we could choose to better balance our empire's output.

Then again it would be nice if the job types that generate lots of social science output had physics & engineering counterparts to balance part of that equation ....

 

[monkeypunch87]

Yeah, the removal surprised me as well. Before 2.2 I balanced my research, which I got from the galaxy map, with specialized building. Now I'm more or less at the mercy of evenly distributed research points on the map.

 

[bmt17]

Instead of outright replacement why not allow for some form of a branching upgrade? I.E. you get to pick the current "balanced" building or you can choose to specialize the building.

Given that in every playthough I've had in 2.2.X that Social Science production has completely outpaced Physics & Engineering research it would be nice if we could choose to better balance our empire's output.

Then again it would be nice if the job types that generate lots of social science output had physics & engineering counterparts to balance part of that equation ....

Instead of adding new job types I would rather just see specialized building upgrade paths that add +x% to field X output.

There does need to be something to balance society output though, it just seems like they threw that on random jobs.

 

[Mikhail_Mengsk]

No.

I'd rather have an edict that gives bonus to a branch and slight malus to the others instead of having 3 buildings with 3 tiers to juggle with the rest of the building's already crowded list.

Also, who wouldn't just choose the Engineering building most of the time?

 

[The Exile]

Alternatively, we could have policies that change the basic production of every one of your “researcher” jobs from 4/4/4 to 6/3/3, or even 8/2/2!

This is a much better option than specialized buildings; less micro, easier to calibrate the culture's focus to what you want overall.

Then again it would be nice if the job types that generate lots of social science output had physics & engineering counterparts to balance part of that equation ....

This really ought to be addressed regardless of any other balance options. I was totally baffled (even a little shocked) to realize that wasn't a feature. If culture workers and priests generate Society, why don't roboticists (and maybe rare resource producers) generate a little Engineering, why don't shield generators and energy nexus generate a little Physics?

It seems like those two are more prevalent in space than Society, but that barely balances all the Society from observation posts, and as we all know planets quickly outweigh space resources after the first couple decades.

 

[KingAlamar]

That nominal 30% difference never seemed like enough of a difference to matter much. Could we get those, plus additional policies with higher numbers? +100%, -50% to the other two ought to do it.

Alternatively, we could have policies that change the basic production of every one of your “researcher” jobs from 4/4/4 to 6/3/3, or even 8/2/2!

<Long-winded reply deleted in favor of below>

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Edit: How about a Research Policy setting with an AI automation twist?? We could certainly continue having jobs that generate Society or Physics or Engineering as their only science output. However maybe we introduce a new policy that uses the AI to manage the science generated from just the RESEARCH BUILDINGs??

The policy could have four settings: Balanced, Encourage Physics, Encourage Engineering, Encourage Society.

You could only change the policy once every 10 years so "TIME" is the currency you pay with.

What the policy could do in effect would be tweak the science output of your RESEARCH BUILDINGS so that the totals your empire generates in raw Society/Engineering/Physics are as balanced as possible [for the balanced setting]. The "encourage" settings would just slightly favor one of the fields of study [Eng/Phy/Soc]

Example for "balanced":

Lets say your empire generates 100 Society from "non-researchers". Lets say your researchers [from research buildings] generate 100 physics, 100 engineering, and 100 society without any modifications.

With the balanced setting your "non-researchers" still generate their 100. However now the AI adjusts the output from the research building jobs. Instead of 100/100/100 you wind up with a split of 133/34/133 from research. The grand total of raw science generated is 133/134/133 which is the balance we're looking for.

 

[Dalwin]

Or at least give us back some of the old policies that would prioritize one type of research at the expense of the others. There is very little one can do other than at startup, to favor one branch.

 

[Cat_Fuzz]

I had suggested in sore you'd thread to make the tier 3 research upgrade have the option of specialisation, at the cost of an additional exotic resource like motes for engineering, gases for society and crystals for physics.

 

[permeakra]

I think we could do better with planet-unique mutually exclusive buildings providing planet-wide bonus to some area. Say, a base building for +33% research bonus to one are and 2 upgrades for extra 22% each

I also think that we can have buildings or civics making existing jobs produce some small amount of research. Say, a building making artisans and metallurgists produce +1 engineering research each, a building making merchants and entertainers produce 1 society research each and a building making techniciants produce 1 physics research each.

Exact specifics are, of course, up to debate.

 

[Theter]

There is also part of the problem coming from techs fields being really uneven, aka Engineering > Society >>> Physics. I would not absolutely want to get more specialised engi labs if physics was good to begin with...

 

[Aed]

I'd rather just have a single tech resource and policy sliders that allow you to distribute it proportionally to the different tech feilds. It's simpler, and allows just as much strategic choice and possiblity for specialisation.

The current three tech resource system is almost entirely for fluff value and adds very little to the game.