Btw, anybody seen The_Nighthawk lately? I did not see his name at the new forums yet
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The_Nighthawk wrote:I've worked out the research like this:
Decay - I haven't worked a number out, but if you have progress and then stop funding a research area, it will decay by ~5% of what has been researched, based on your numbers. So 0.95^5 (turns) * 95% = 73%
As for researching, it seems that as you put RP into a project, it starts a 'snowball' effect where the research progress itself adds more RP's to the effort, so long as you continue putting RP's into the tech.
The specific numbers I don't know, but it works something like this. Research will add a percent of the current value of the research, up to the RP's you contribute on that turn, before bonuses. What that % bonus is, I don't know, but I have a feeling it's in the neighbourhood of 10-15%.
So say I have a 5000RP tech that I've researched 85% of, and I'm getting 400RP /turn. At 100% I would add 400 RP to the 4250 I've already researched, and you'd expect the bar to be at 93%. Instead, the project gets completed! Because the research itself contributed the other 350. It would have contributed perhaps up to 425 itself, but that's a guess. Also, it will only match the RP's you put in yourself (400 in this case).
Example 2: 60000 RP project is 85% complete. You're pulling in 4000 RP a turn, and have a 120% bonus to that tech. Where do you need to put your slider for the tech to research, but not waste a ton of RP's?
15% of 60k is 9000. You'd think 4000RP +120% is only 8800 and you won't get it, but you'd be wrong and waste a bunch of RP (not a lot, but enough). The project itself will match your contribution of RP, so you need to take 9000 and divide by 3.2 (1 for your contribution, 1 for the free contribution and 1.2 for the bonus). You get 2813, and set your slider to 71% (or 75% if you want to play it safe). You get to sink 1000+ RP into your next research and maybe pop it out a turn early.
There is a maximum that the research will match your contribution, and I don't know what it is, but trial and error lead me to believe it's around 10% of what you have researched already (5100 in the example above, well below the 2813 we end up contributing).
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And a small remark by myself:
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Also, a 1% allocation always seems to be sufficient to prevent any decay from happening.
So, as long as the slider is not set to zero, there's no research decay, even if your total research output is zero. Funny, isn't it? ^^