Dear Paradox, the late game research penalty is unbalanced

[Yenzen]

Since the other empires have the penalty too, and the protectorates NEVER EVER catch up to you, it seems kinda balanced, doesn't it?

Sometimes being a fanatically xenophile pacifist is tough, wanting to share your worlds with your off-type former primitives, but never closing the gap to integrating then :-(.

 

[Lord Milutin]

Also note that it is "1% for every pop after the first 10". So a Homeplanet is heavily subsidized in the calculation, at tops incurring 16% instead of 26% penalty (asuming old default of 16 pops).

Your planet is 22 Pops. That means it 'only' increaes the tech cost by 32%.
But that is 32% for EACH 22 pop planet. Inlcuding the ones not optimised for reserach.
That planet is in no way more limiting then the 22 Pop planet optimised for Power (because you use Robots).

But if it has 22 pops, wouldn't it increase by 22%, not 32?
10% for a planet and 12% for other pops since the first 10 aren't counted?

 

[GloatingSwine]

But if it has 22 pops, wouldn't it increase by 22%, not 32?
10% for a planet and 12% for other pops since the first 10 aren't counted?

It's only the first 10 pops in the whole empire that aren't counted.

The tech penalty is (pops-10)+10*(planets-1)

 

[The Founder]

Since the other empires have the penalty too, and the protectorates NEVER EVER catch up to you, it seems kinda balanced, doesn't it?

Actually protectorates do have the best chance. If only the AI would be able to properly focus on tileblocker tech and research, catching up with 80% and a low planet count would be a snatch.

But if it has 22 pops, wouldn't it increase by 22%, not 32?
10% for a planet and 12% for other pops since the first 10 aren't counted?

First 10 total are not counted. Not 10 per planet.
So your pop derived reserach penalty is always 10 pop and 1 planet lower then the empires total.

 

[Lord Milutin]

@GloatingSwine @The Founder Ahh, I get it now. Thanks for clarifying it!
Also, how many research points would you suggest having on each planet to keep up with all those penalties?

 

[Almond_Brown]

If you feed a Protectorate both Minerals and Energy over long term trade deals, I have had 3 Prots catch up to become my Vassals in the same game. You cannot let them try and do it themselves though...

 

[The Founder]

@GloatingSwine @The Founder Ahh, I get it now. Thanks for clarifying it!
Also, how many research points would you suggest having on each planet to keep up with all those penalties?

"However many are possible."
Unless you only look at one specific Tier of technology (where you can pre-calculate the penalty for each tech), there is no proper equation.

Each of the 3 tech tiers has 4 subtiers. With the difference between the highest and lowest being +100%.
@tier1cost1 = 360
@tier1cost2 = 480
@tier1cost3 = 600
@tier1cost4 = 720

@tier2cost1 = 1000
@tier2cost2 = 1400
@tier2cost3 = 1800
@tier2cost4 = 2200

@tier3cost1 = 3000
@tier3cost2 = 4000
@tier3cost3 = 5000
@tier3cost4 = 6000
I guess we could asume cost 1 to be the core value for each Tier. With some tech on the Tier having a surcharge. (+1/3, +2/3, +1 on Tier 1 and 3. +2/5, +4/5, +6/5 on Tier 2).
Or you could look at the game having 12 tiers actually.

Repeatable tech by design is getting much more expensive per level. It starts around T2.2, but exceeds T2.4 within 3 levels.
1400 + 400 per level for Physics
1500 + 480 for the other two
The idea was that you should never run out of repeatable techs to reserach. Fallen empires 'only' start with about 5 levels and do not do reserach.

 

[Agamemnic]

Did you mean this one?

Damn. That is godly optimisation.

I'm still mortal by comparison

 

[xe2s]

Stellaris isn't a tall-compatible game. Tall will never protect you from the sheer size of enemy federations, FEs and end-game crises. A huge empire should be able to expand while preserving (and even improving research time).

I would rephrase that. Stellaris isn't a tall-compatible game YET. Though devs already said that its going to change. So the mechanics is good dear devs, please dont make any changes. I think the penalties should be even more, but maybe after the udpates concerning tall empires.

 

[NevanMasterson]

can someone please just find a way to remove this from the script manually?

 

[GC13]

can someone please just find a way to remove this from the script manually?

All you need to do is turn two numbers in defines.lua to zero. Then, your research speed will increase rapidly as you expand rather than increase at a reasonable pace.

 

[Agamemnic]

can someone please just find a way to remove this from the script manually?

Plenty of mods on steam

 

[NevanMasterson]

All you need to do is turn two numbers in defines.lua to zero. Then, your research speed will increase rapidly as you expand rather than increase at a reasonable pace.

I found that doing this does not help due to the fact that stellaris doesn't let me alter the .lua file without creating a custom mod, which I really cannot be bothered to do