Society has a lot more techs which end up being pretty minor. It makes sense you progress through that research easier. Keep in mind engineering tends to contain the most powerful and useful techs.
The case for physic/engineer focused research labs/jobs
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I think whichever buildings did produce physics/engineering research should also be planetary unique.
That will not work as it is more of a band aid fix. The only way you can fix this is to give jobs which you have some degree of control and raise the actual yield.
Going back to my example earlier with 500 physic/1000 society/500 engineer.
30% bonus to physic and -15% penalty to society and engineer policy would give bonus of 150 physic and minus 75 to engineering.
Using the same math process as before. That is 30% obviously bonus to speed and would save you about 4 month on physic progress on a 10,000 cost tech.
On the flipside it would crucially also slow your engineer research speed by 4 month and is 15% slower forcing you to build more labs, for more engineering, to compensate which also devalue both society and physic research points.
The only way I could see a policy works is if I can manual adjust research bonus to 15%/-30%/15% and I don't think that would be a popular solution.
It also doesn't solve the underlaying problem of having no control/push to raise physic/engineering raw number research yield higher.
Where do you get all this Society science from? If it's anything I swim in it's Physics science as almost all system based science I encounter are Physics. Engineering always lags behind. In my current game I got 600 Physics, 380 Society and 320 Engineering.
In the past, there was an edict like research grants now, that let you choose the field to get more research speed for. It would give a smaller decrease to the other fields, but it still had a small net gain. The ability to emphasize one tech field is something I liked.
Another thing that existed more recently was research points for the other fields as secondary resources from buildings, much like monument/temple still has. Planet shield gave physics and engineering. Military academy gave engineering and society. Clinics gave society, etc. This could be reinstated. The Shield has no jobs even and Academy only has one. They both need more utility imo. Slave processing plant does not have jobs either, needs a buff. The robot assembly building can give some engineering output. It could make sense.
Another thing that existed more recently was research points for the other fields as secondary resources from buildings, much like monument/temple still has. Planet shield gave physics and engineering. Military academy gave engineering and society. Clinics gave society, etc. This could be reinstated. The Shield has no jobs even and Academy only has one. They both need more utility imo. Slave processing plant does not have jobs either, needs a buff. The robot assembly building can give some engineering output. It could make sense.
Sounds like you got very very lucky with space-based deposits which are for the most part completely RNG either at galaxy generating or from anomalies event. Judging by your low engineer and society raw yield it sounds like you are playing tall and staying under admin cap right? If this is true then it sounds like most of your excess physic comes from research outpost deposit not planet-based jobs.
The biggest culprit would be the "Autochithan monument" building and is always limited to one-per-planet and generate both unity and society and affect every possible govt you can play as in-game. The same build/job goes by different name if you switch to different govt or different civic. For example, megacorp version is about corporation culture site.
If I want unity without society then you can go the entertainment/holo-threatres route which give you unity and amenities for non-gestalt. Since amenities is always useful I can tolerance not having autochithan monument. Only non-gestalt can use a building that provide decent unity without resorting to culture job. Other are not so luck and read on to find out why.
As most non-unity build jobs only give you token unity at the most. To make it a bit worse is that your Coordinator and Synapse Drone (equivalent of ruler for non-gestalt) jobs comes from your colony building and you would have to disable them if you want less society. The only exception to this unity generation for gestalt is rogue servitor's bio-trophies which provide 2 unity for each population which is lot more than +1 from hunter-seeker drone jobs for all gestalts.
The issue is even worse for Driven Assimilator and Devourer Swarm because they get society research point each time they assimilate or devour a population. Devourer Swarm also has a 20% bonus to biology tech only but it does let you push through some of the societies tech quicker as them on top of devouring population.
So, it depends on who you are playing as there exists a slight slant for all govt. However gestalt has a stronger bias toward having more society slant. In short if you are gestalt you are out of luck and will need to accept that having more society and unity in lock-step is the only way forward for you until something changes.
If you are curious you can view the the various jobs that exists here. Pay special attention to how few job for gestalt actually provide unities above +1 which indirectly encourage heavy bias toward society research points.
https://stellaris.paradoxwikis.com/Jobs
I was comparing playing as non-gestalt vs gestalt when this heavy society slant showed up. I was playing a tall regular gestalt machine empire geared toward energy lower consumption higher energy yield. Then I compared that earlier run against a tall research focused mechanist, which doesn't suffer from chronic energy shortage, mid-game with intelligent and they was falling behind on society tech even when I doubled down on general research. When I broken down the available jobs to gestalt and it didn't take long to realize why the slant was pronounced for them. I went back and did another run as hive mind. Same issue.
I'm amiss why priests provide society research at all. Of the all types of "cultural" jobs, priests seem to be the least sensical for that. Besides they already provide a rather big boost to amenities - actually as big as high priests do.
I would second (well, probably fourth) the suggestion of having a couple of buildings give jobs that specifically provide engineering or physics.
Maybe the energy and mineral boosting buildings could be changed so they gave a pop job (or jobs) that increased yields (as the buildings currently do) as well as increasing physics / engineering (in a similar fashion to the medical jobs increasing pop growth).
Admittedly, you probably wouldn't want to use those to the same extent as the autocthon/heritage site. But it would make thematic sense, and reduce the imbalance (and give opportunities to focus a bit).
Maybe the energy and mineral boosting buildings could be changed so they gave a pop job (or jobs) that increased yields (as the buildings currently do) as well as increasing physics / engineering (in a similar fashion to the medical jobs increasing pop growth).
Admittedly, you probably wouldn't want to use those to the same extent as the autocthon/heritage site. But it would make thematic sense, and reduce the imbalance (and give opportunities to focus a bit).
Perhaps a simple "fix" would do the trick? Planetary decisions that transform research of one type into another for all 3 major types, at an efficiency loss, how does that sound? It would at least be less clunky than policy-level settings due to being able to dodge the 10-year cooldown, and would allow you to specialize tech worlds in a particular type of tech. Or would this be too OP?
There is a problem here. Imagine a mechanist materialist empire that gets Psi tech long before synthetics or even droids because they have like 3x the society research and no way to boost engineering (happened in my last 2 games actually, getting psi without trying or wanting it). In the previous version I'd build engineering focused labs to ensure my tech represented my roleplay and also the gameplay of my race (not waiting an extra decade to get the tech I need). Now every race is homogenized because of the lack of choice in research. If that example didn't help, imagine if every time you wanted to build alloys or consumer goods you had to build an "Advanced Materials" building produced BOTH but that only had half the output of either an alloy or consumer goods building. Or worse, if you wanted to build a mining district and instead could only build a "Basic Materials" district that produced 1 farmer, 1 technician and 1 miner job. You'd be annoyed because instead of plugging a gap in your economy (mineral deficit) or defining your race instead you're just making yourself more generic and technically a little stronger... but with the same gap/imbalance. (I know it's not a perfect comparison because there are few drains to research barring enlightening primitives I think and you can't really go negative, but the idea is the same).
My Suggestion: Better Job Slot Options
Researcher Jobs default to using the current general job, but also open up 3 new jobs that can be switched but share the cap. This could apply to other jobs too, obviously any that have multiple outputs (unity + whatever) so you can focus on just unity/whatever and also the ability to have sub-jobs/variants/specialisms could benefit single output jobs like metallurgists by allowing a low-efficiency (200% cost) but high-output (125-150% output) version for when you're running a deficit of alloys/consumer goods/rare resources. Or perhaps a lower output version with a secondary output - like engineering on metallurgists, or trade value etc. much like how civics can turn administrators into unique versions they instead could enable a sub-job of administrators with a cap. If they allowed this then other civics or technologies could enable similar variants of every job without overriding them and also allowing them to be combined without errors.
Research labs: +2 Research Jobs
2 general researchers OR 2 specialists OR 1 generalist and 1 specialist.
Hitting + on a specialist would lower the generalist job default generalist job. You'd need a little lock symbol on the jobs so you could choose which jobs are decreased when you have several in the list, or if they didn't want to include a little lock symbol to keep from changing the ratios then you'd have to lower the generalist jobs first before you can increase the specialist... but either way it should work.
My Suggestion: Better Job Slot Options
Researcher Jobs default to using the current general job, but also open up 3 new jobs that can be switched but share the cap. This could apply to other jobs too, obviously any that have multiple outputs (unity + whatever) so you can focus on just unity/whatever and also the ability to have sub-jobs/variants/specialisms could benefit single output jobs like metallurgists by allowing a low-efficiency (200% cost) but high-output (125-150% output) version for when you're running a deficit of alloys/consumer goods/rare resources. Or perhaps a lower output version with a secondary output - like engineering on metallurgists, or trade value etc. much like how civics can turn administrators into unique versions they instead could enable a sub-job of administrators with a cap. If they allowed this then other civics or technologies could enable similar variants of every job without overriding them and also allowing them to be combined without errors.
Research labs: +2 Research Jobs
2 general researchers OR 2 specialists OR 1 generalist and 1 specialist.
Hitting + on a specialist would lower the generalist job default generalist job. You'd need a little lock symbol on the jobs so you could choose which jobs are decreased when you have several in the list, or if they didn't want to include a little lock symbol to keep from changing the ratios then you'd have to lower the generalist jobs first before you can increase the specialist... but either way it should work.
Also keep in mind that scanning debris helps recuperate some of the ground physics and engineering research loses to society research.
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I'm pretty sure it's mostly an OCD problem. Same with people having fits about "clean borders" in CK2 and EU4.
The 2 games I have played so far were both focused on society (spiritual Ascension / Hive mind with genetic ascension) but I can imagine myself quite frustrated when I will play an empire for Synthetic ascension... Being able to choose your science focus should exist somehow.
Doing it per-planet means I will need multitude decisions (physic focus, society focus, engineering focus, and return to normal focus) which is undesirable GUI cluster.
Having 3 different kind of labs with 3 tier for each or one basic lab and three upgrade path is much better and contribute less to GUI cluster. Double true since you have to occasion look at decision list from time to time. Once you finish build labs you never have to look at the building list cluster again.
Not entirely true as you do get some society ones just as you get physic/engineer ones. Once you run out of anomalies the slant comes back. Going to war just to specifically gain tech will only give you what someone else already have and put on their starships which may partially help you but not as much as you think since there are more tech that you can't reverse engineering such as Anti-Gravity Engineering (+1 to housing for city district capacity) and Mega-Structure Engineering. It just happens that most of them are in society and you already can push the society number so they don't need help as much physic/engineer does.
Also it is not loss but needing to push raw research number higher for physic/engineer. The only loss here is adding more society give you less research speed for the same cost either energy or consumer goods or energy/material for gestalt. IE if you have 200 and increase 20 you get 10% speed boost. But at 10,000 that same 20 is 0.2% boost. If you have a huge disparity you would want to boost so that you don't have as much inefficiency between the 3 fields.
I don't go for clean borders in CK2 and EU4 ever. However I do go for bigger border/vassal to collect more tax which lets you conduct warfare with more resource.
Don't confuse OCD for min-max. As I would hate to waste most of my society planet deposits by not utilizing them just because of this slant and forcing me to abandon intelligent due to 10% society bonus.
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Why is this forcing you to drop Intelligent? That doesn't make any sense. You just... keep using Society research and do repeatables? How is it a waste? It seems like a complete OCD thing.
And I’ve stated before. Ultimately, I think his justification for the desired change is strange.
But I agree with the option in principle. There was times in previous builds where I strived to specialize my research, either for RP reason, or to reach a goal tech more reliably.
This notion of more society reduced my gain is an absurd justification as far as I’m concerned. But the issue of being able to focus resources makes sense to me.
But I agree with the option in principle. There was times in previous builds where I strived to specialize my research, either for RP reason, or to reach a goal tech more reliably.
This notion of more society reduced my gain is an absurd justification as far as I’m concerned. But the issue of being able to focus resources makes sense to me.
I would originally go for intelligent, quick learners, conservationist, decadent, and weak. I would put robots in most worker strata so weak/decadent makes it more likely that they will not want to take those jobs plus less housing usage and 25% bonus to scientist experience.
Now with the slant in mind I am going for natural engineers, quick learners, conservationist, and decadent. It lets me free up weak and I can't figure out a way to put 4 points in 3 traits and keep decadent and weak. I supposed I could swap quick learners for charismatic and add weak back in. There are very few non-worker strata two point traits.
If you want to build a research focused population how would you do it?
I don't think anyone is saying that... Reduce speed boost due to diminish returns? Yes.
But reducing your total raw society gains? Not really.