Multiple Simultaneous Research / Research Interval

[A BlackBird]

Hi
It's frustrating that tiny research projects need to be researched one at a time, taking a month each, especially in the end game when you've built up a strong tech base, when you have lots of mods, and during the later game when game is much slower. This seems like the biggest limiting factor to research end game.

It's not like traditions, where you can unlock it all immediately as long as you have the unity. I tried searching for a way around this, but haven't found anything online.

In the 'unique ascension perks' mod, Cortana helps, but it is way too infrequent and only gives vanilla tech options.
Surveying gives tech options, however only researches a fraction of the tech and doesn't finish them, and I don't think there is an easy way to make vanilla and modded surveying give the entire tech instead. Same goes for stealing tech via espionage, and for analyzing debris.
I tried finding a way to decrease the interval research is checked, instead of once monthly it could be several times a month, but I'm not sure that is possible. I don't think it is possible to choose more than one tech as well.

The only other option I can think of is some sort of custom event that gives you techs based on how much research you have stored, but I'm not particularly good at modding and not sure how to do that, especially something that is not random and would automatically include modded techs.

Anyone have any thought on this?

 

[ZomgK3tchup]

This is why auto-research was added.

When you reach the point that research choices no longer matter, activate auto-research and forget about research.

The part about situation log projects taking a month each is negligible. There are, what, 5 projects per research category? At worst, you spend half an in-game year catching up on all those projects.

 

[Abdulijubjub]

When you reach the point that research choices no longer matter, activate auto-research and forget about research.

This point does not exist unless you've already beaten the crisis (or are otherwise done with the game). The reward for specialization in weaponry and defense are so high that, in any given run, there are generally enough dead-to-you techs that just turning on auto-research will cut your research in half, if not more.

Physics is generally ok. All four are generally useful unless you're completely skipping shields or energy weapons, and even then you're only missing 2/4 or 1/4.

Society is half useless techs: army strength/health is always useless beyond saving some time and minerals (it ought to be capped at maybe 10, like the other military techs). A mature empire will need a fraction of the energy/minerals it needs in food (a single metallurgists burns 12 minerals vs. the equivalent in food feeding 15 pops), so the food repeatable is mostly an aesthetic choice. Unity is good, but only if you're tall, at that point in the game, or have nothing else to research. Leader lifespan only needs to be researched once per 5 years. And strikecraft is take it or leave it. You'll usually only want one or two of those, at most.

Engineering is a nightmare. Defense platforms quickly become obsolete (unless you're going all in with a billion single system bulwarks), armor can be skipped, minerals (as a percentage of pops that no longer have to work as miners) have diminishing returns, and missiles/kinetics are take it or leave it (specialize into them, or drop them).

Autoresearch really needs a blacklisting feature.

 

[ZomgK3tchup]

This point does not exist unless you've already beaten the crisis (or are otherwise done with the game).

On a game with default settings? No way.

By 2300, the player is usually so far ahead of anyone else that minmaxing which repeatables they take isn't necessary.

I agree that auto-research could use a blacklist feature, but it's kind of a niche need.

 

[SirBlackAxe]

On a game with default settings? No way.

By 2300, the player is usually so far ahead of anyone else that minmaxing which repeatables they take isn't necessary.

I agree that auto-research could use a blacklist feature, but it's kind of a niche need.

Depends whether or not you're using game settings to prevent that from happening. I don't think increasing the difficulty so that AI puts up more of a challenge is particularly niche. Nor is multiplayer.

 

[The5lacker]

It's not like traditions, where you can unlock it all immediately as long as you have the unity.

Why on God's Green Earth would you do this though? Even ignoring how getting benefits earlier increases the effect they have over the course of the game, the longer you wait the more expensive Traditions get because of Empire Size, so you're literally spending more to get the same effect. For no reason. The only way this would be analogous to tech would be if you didn't set any active research for *decades.*

 

[Incompetent]

Surveying gives tech options, however only researches a fraction of the tech and doesn't finish them, and I don't think there is an easy way to make vanilla and modded surveying give the entire tech instead. Same goes for stealing tech via espionage, and for analyzing debris.

This is not true; you can gain techs entirely from surveying debris and it doesn't interrupt your normal research cycle. It's just that you need to survey several debris fields with the same tech to complete it.

So let's break down the "bottlenecked by one tech per month" scenario.
1. It can certainly happen that your monthly science output exceeds the entire cost of a low-tier tech. Say you're making 4k Physics per month and you research a tech that costs 2k. Then you'll finish it in one month and the other 2k goes into storage. Stored science is spent at your current science production rate, so you effectively research at double speed until it's spent.
2. So the scenario where you are truly bottlenecked is one where you are unlocking techs more often than once every two months, per category. I don't mean individual cheap techs here, I mean your average rate of tech over time. This is the only scenario where science starts piling up in storage and you can never spend it. But since you will very soon exhaust the regular tech tree at this rate, we're talking about repeatables.
3. Repeatables start at 50k base and go up from there. So you need to be making, at a minimum, 75k science (25k per category), multiplied by your sprawl modifier to tech, multiplied by whatever scaling cost you have from the tier of repeatable.

If you're producing that much science per month, the game is already kind of broken from a general economic perspective (the science is just an example, you could make equally huge amounts of unity or alloys instead). The game could still be challenging enough with crisis multipliers and so on, but it's always going to be a degenerate experience. To be honest I think the problems with running the game to that stage are deeper and can't be fixed with "let me complete a research every day".

 

[Abdulijubjub]

Why on God's Green Earth would you do this though? Even ignoring how getting benefits earlier increases the effect they have over the course of the game, the longer you wait the more expensive Traditions get because of Empire Size, so you're literally spending more to get the same effect. For no reason. The only way this would be analogous to tech would be if you didn't set any active research for *decades.*

I know of exactly one case two cases: rushing a particular ascension. You hold on to your ascension pick then, once you've researched the relevant tech, you take the perk and fill out the entire tree in one go.

Very useful, especially for Teachers of the Shroud beelining psionic ascension.

Edit: 2 cases. The last is when you're on your second to last perk and last tree, and don't have an ascension (probably because you're going all in for unity and don't have the ascension techs yet). Very similar. You also just stock up unity until you finally roll the right tech. You have to wait, or else you won't have a tradition tree free to buy the ascension.

 

[The5lacker]

I know of exactly one case two cases: rushing a particular ascension. You hold on to your ascension pick then, once you've researched the relevant tech, you take the perk and fill out the entire tree in one go.

Very useful, especially for Teachers of the Shroud beelining psionic ascension.

Edit: 2 cases. The last is when you're on your second to last perk and last tree, and don't have an ascension (probably because you're going all in for unity and don't have the ascension techs yet). Very similar. You also just stock up unity until you finally roll the right tech. You have to wait, or else you won't have a tradition tree free to buy the ascension.

I mean, you can select the last Tradition in a list and *not* pick an Ascension Perk immediately. You can leave it un-selected. Even if you complete the tradition tree. You just have a complete tree and a free AP selection to make.

Leaving the Unity up while waiting for a tech to finish so you *can* select the Path you're looking for is a thing that happens, granted, but A. that should not be your seventh Tradition Tree, holy bejeebus and B. that's still not really analogous to researching multiple techs at a time because you can't leave your research empty, wait for a tech prereq to be finished, and then immediately select the tech you were waiting for. You still have to re-shuffle your research options by completing a tech, which is why it's still always correct to be actively researching, you just have to try and limit yourself to completing prereqs to other things that may muddy your choices.

 

[A BlackBird]

My style is always a huge focus on tech production, which is why I hit this limit later on.
And I know this isn't as much of a problem in vanilla. But I have a lot of mods with new techs, and I make crisis/fallen empires very hard, so more tech really helps.
I guess this isn't something others have had a problem with.
But thank you guys for your thoughts on this.