[Declined] Research Time

[jerome]

Cut them down a bit will yer, for crying out loud :/
There`s so much shit to research AND each thing takes bloody ages. It`s just non-sensical, you try and say it`s so lengthy to "keep the round going" but then have you noticed cr/bs comes out at tick 100-130 if you so work to it? Thus shortening a length of a round as cr/bs is more or less unstoppable for quite a bit.

[Helix]

It is all about decisions, do you try to mine all the roids you have, have quick eta, or get those advanced ships? You have to chose which you think will benefit you the most. If most people concentrate on eta research and a few rush to BS, then the few that rush to BS will actually be better off due to the lack of BS defence, but if most people rush to the larger ships, there will be more bs def, but the few that rush eta will be able to squeeze by defence.

You must chose your path, but chose wisely young grasshopper, for the path you chose could decide your outcome for the rest of the round!

[jerome]

Yes. But the level of excitement one could derive from these research lengths, ranks high. High as watching paint dry.

[Helix]

since when was PA exciting?

Under the same argument you should say that attacks should take 5 minutes to land and not 12 hourse, because 12 hours sitting there watching your fleet crawl slower than a snail to their target was too boring. PA is all about wasting your perfectly good time on a browser web game!

[jerome]

True, but the reasoning for lengthening the tech tree is severely flawed. There are so many different options, is there a need to make them all so painstakingly long?

[Helix]

I think they could shorten it some, by making the times increase less, the roid research for example, it jumps to the max of 72 in like the first 1/4 of the researches, they should make it gradually increase to 72, and have only the last one be 72 (for all tech trees) rather than jump high quickly and stay there.

[mist]

i believe the idea was to make it so that for a significant part of the round there were differences between planets, based on what tech they'd chosen to do.

personally, i believe that the tech tree should take longer to complete than teh round lasts

-mist

[Rc mayhem]

i think that the time for each stage should be shorter, no longer than 36 hours, and there should be more stages to make up for it.

Cm

[Helix]

How about research costs money to run. There is the default time which takes a set amount of money, or you can add a boost to your research by diverting a percentage of your income to research, making it go faster. It would have to be a percentage of your incometo keep larger players from blazing through the research. It would add one more element of differentiation to the universe, as there would be people who have research fast but few ships, and those with more ships but slower research.

(tbh I dont much like this idea, but that is what suggestion forum is for....suggestions)

[themast]

yeah i would pay some RES if it cut the research time down

[cypher]

tbh the mining of roids should be higher... once you reach 8k roids it's game over practically:S

[Rc mayhem]

i like the percentage idea. would open strategy right up. do you get roids slower or research faster.... nice.

[Kal]

There are arguments for both long and short researches, I think some further discussion would be useful.

[Gerbie]

With the current setup all the interesting bits of the tech tree have been completely researched by most of the players (except for those who don't login on a daily basis or have insanely high roid counts). I would add more researches or slow down research a bit overall. New researches could for instance be extra construction support (20/50/90/140/200) or extra core mining researches.

[barney]

not a fully formed i dea but maybe researches could be lenghtened however you could add a second slot for research. as it seamsd to me that increasing options leads to increased strategic thinking. for example som will go for

ETA+shippies -can steel roids but not mine em all
roids+shippies -less chance of taking roids cos of eta
roids+ETA -more chance of not getting covered but smaller shipppies are worse at taking roids
etc...

any obviously ppl will go for combinations

more options leads in general to more strategic options, and i don't feel this would complicate the game too much, and correct me if im wrong but a large part of pa is strategy?

[Gerbie]

In order to make sure research times are aimed to reach the full tech tree at the end of the round, you can make research times dynamic:
1. Make a total of all research times (always asume the planet is paid, asume no engineering setting and no research labs).
2. Count the amount of ticks till the end of the round (you'd need to set a default for that in advance then).
3. Devide time_left by default_time _required for all research times.

This makes that:
- all research cannot be finished before the round is over (people realy need to make choices on what to do).
- people who fell behind can catch up a bit
- it is important to keep making strategical choices untill the end of the round

[noah02]

I think there fine the way they are because we have engineers in which we can make the time shorter and also constructions to.
Whats the point in paying money to go faster when you already can(aka Research Laboratory )

[Cochese]

I'd favor shorter research times on some things such as the stupid infrastructure branch which incidentally is hugely annoying.

Planetary mining should be sacked, or made worthwhile. At least double the resources per tick.

Ship technology could possibly take longer, it might spice things up a little bit. Traveltime too.

Heavy Cargo Transfers could possibly be changed. Make more limits, with shorter research times between them...say 250 roid intervals up to 2k, then 500 roid intervals up to 5k, then 1k roid intervals to 10k or whatever the upper limit is.

[Banned]

Originally Posted by Cochese

I'd favor shorter research times on some things such as the stupid infrastructure branch which incidentally is hugely annoying.

The infrastructure branch is frankly pointless. Getting anything above 50 constructions is a bad idea (unless you're a scanner, I guess). Firstly, up to this point the constructions gain you value compared to buying ships, afterwards you lose value comperatively. Secondly, cap on number of very expensive structures that can be destroyed increases past 10, which means that you'll spend longer rebuilding (than with just 50). 50 allows you a decent balance (15 sec(optionally more mines/centers), 10 res, 12 mines/centers, 5 amps, 5 blockers, 3 facs). Of course if you're never going to be attacked you might as well increase the number of finance centers and security centers you have.

I think that the gain given by going past the 50 structure research so too low to justify this as anything but some of the last research that can be done.

Planetary mining should be sacked, or made worthwhile. At least double the resources per tick.

Many tick plans included the first planetary mining research this round, as it yields 30 roids which is debatebly worthwhile at that point. I didn't think so and I don't think it's worthwhile later comparatively. Improving it means higher ratio ships:roids which is bad, so I'm voting for scrapping it.

Ship technology could possibly take longer, it might spice things up a little bit. Traveltime too.

I was quite shocked when I first heard how short the ship tech branch is in PAX, but considering the new form of targeting I fail to see anything longer doing much but making early 'victim' races even worse off. As for travel tech, making the (arguably) most valuable tree longer gives races with low ETA pods a huge advantage over the high ETA ones (see previous point), so I'm opposed there as well.

Heavy Cargo Transfers could possibly be changed. Make more limits, with shorter research times between them...say 250 roid intervals up to 2k, then 500 roid intervals up to 5k, then 1k roid intervals to 10k or whatever the upper limit is.

What you meant to say is 'cut down on the time for the researches between 1k and 2k roids'. Because apart from that, the current setup is exactly like you say.

[A2]

The reasoning behind the later researches taking quite a long amount of time, is for the research activity to be part of the game for more of the round than it used to be, where anyone who was paying attention had the entire tech-tree within about a month, meaning there weren't any differences between planets.

Spreading ship researches over a longer period of time than they already are would almost certainly be detrimental, as some races don't come into their own until later in the round, by which time it may already be too late if the races with the earlier ships as their most effective had gained too much of a lead. Jester made this point quite well already though:

Originally Posted by Banned

I was quite shocked when I first heard how short the ship tech branch is in PAX, but considering the new form of targeting I fail to see anything longer doing much but making early 'victim' races even worse off

[Static]

You can shorten the research time but add a requirement of a minimum amount of research centers. The higher on thetech tree the more research centers needed to start that research. That would speed up research as long as you had enough research centers. Structure killers would of course hamper things abit.

[Eol]

Originally Posted by cypher

tbh the mining of roids should be higher... once you reach 8k roids it's game over practically:S

[Banned]

Originally Posted by Eol

Ability to mine more than 8k roids.

Have a look at the amount of targets the planets with >8k roids have. It would hardly matter if they could mine more. They can barely attack anyone anyway.

Increasing the limit would mean planets (and alliances) becoming 'untouchable' ala round 3, which I can't see as being a good thing.

[KarnivOre]

ive completed all the researches apart from the last few roid ones.

being that i suck, i doubt i will need them......

makin it impossible to finish all researches is silly, i think the way it is now is good, you still have choices to make because it takes so long.

however, some of us have to get ships up first, ever tried roiding with only fi and corv when ur a cath? aint possible

if we make it impossible to research everything we might as well go back to pre race research where you had science or war, some things disabled others......


and yes, if all research was finished earlier, i would bore of PA, once everything is done it becomes pretty routine, same types of incs, same etas, same defence required, same people sending, same eta, same targets to attack, same time of launch, same ships sent, same defence sent, same pwning at their planet, same score boost etc etc etc

gets kinda borin

i think making choices is a good idea,
2 things that should always be available tho is ships and mining, as it is unfair to say "no BS or CR type ships if u want min eta) because xan and ter would get a huge advantage.

[KarnivOre]

and yes, i realise i swayed from against to for in the same post.... leave me alone, im hung over

as it is now is ok, but if you have to change it.....

[Eol]

Originally Posted by Banned

Have a look at the amount of targets the planets with >8k roids have. It would hardly matter if they could mine more. They can barely attack anyone anyway.

Increasing the limit would mean planets (and alliances) becoming 'untouchable' ala round 3, which I can't see as being a good thing.

Good point.

[Kal]

with reference to the orignal post - its good that research takes a while, it makes people plan - declined