Research - Best/worst

[yolo911]

Hi

I have been reading Global Conflict forum since it started. I know there are some previous threads that touch on the subject of Research. Now that we have all had time to play the game for awhile, I would like to get some knowledgeable thoughts on which categories are worthwhile and which ones are a waste of MPP's. I feel like I am wasting resourses by investing in intelligence, infrastructure, production tech andindustrial tech. Using hard mathmatics has anyone figured out if these four are worth the Reichsmarks? or greenbacks?

[Wushuki]

I partly agree with what you say, many of the research options are not really worthwhile or only marginally so. Of course it all depends on your country as well.

Basically Industrial research is the most important technology of all. For the USSR and the US this gives you about 100 additional resources per turn per tech. So for these two countries these two technologies are absolute game changers and should always be given the highest priority.

For China and Germany industrial technology improves the income by about 30 resources per tech. A year has about 15 turns, so you'll make back your investment 1/3th of a year after getting the research. Still an excellent deal.

For Japan it was about 18 resources if I remember correctly and for the UK is only 12 or so. In the case of Japan it is still worth it to research it, although its priority is low, for the UK its practically useless.

Note that the bug from the earlier games, that countries could profit from the industrial modifier of the nations they captured, has been fixed for as far as I have been able to tell. So you are not helping your enemy by researching it.

Infrastructure is useless in my opinion. A 15% reduction in 10% transportation cost is 1.5% of the unit cost. 100 / 0.015 = 6667, so you'd have to transport for 6667 worth of MPP just to get your money back. That is about 25 fully upgraded armies or so, not a very good deal.

Production tech is also useless. The calculation is simple, 100 / 0.05 = 2000. So you'd have to spend 2000 resources on buying units to get your money back. That is too much to make the research worth it for any country.

About intelligence, I think this research is critical. Remember that each higher tech level has a reduced chance that you research it. So researching level 1 tanks may give you 5% per chit invested, level 5 tank research only gives you a 1% chance per chit. Intelligence raises this by 1% per level, so it would increase to 8 and 4 percent respectively. The difference between 1% and 4% is huge, if you don't have a high intelligence research it would on average take you almost 7 years to research a level 5 technology if you have just 1 chit invested in it. Obviously this is absurdly long, so without intelligence research you simply cannot get level 4 and level 5 technology.

[wlape3]

I would think some technologies should be tied into the performance of certain units. For example, radar technologies should improve the performance of rockets, aircraft, and certain naval units. I don't know if it actually does this but since these units use radar technology in range finding and target identification I would think better anti-aircraft technology should improve these units.

Artillery technology should also have a bleed over into AA performance, naval performance, armor units, and general combat units too (divisional and higher level artillery assets). I would think the US would be the gold standard here with their high degree of fire control and coordination.

Just my thoughts.

[John DiFool the 2nd]

Production tech is also useless. The calculation is simple, 100 / 0.05 = 2000. So you'd have to spend 2000 resources on buying units to get your money back. That is too much to make the research worth it for any country.

That's not why it's useless: you can easily spend that much buying units in just one calendar year (tho it is of less value the later in the game, so then yeah). But Hubert awhile back (in PDE actually) made any repair/rebuild costs based on the default cost of the unit, not based on the production tech cost. So its effectiveness is about halved; I've argued with him that he should flip it back, as the tech would be applied to reinforcing materials/equipment which has been built using the new reduced costs/efficiences anyway (then shipped to the front), but he stuck to his guns.

[Wushuki]

I agree, that would definitely make production tech a bit more worthwhile. It would make sense from the realism perpective and from the gameplay perspective.

As for the current use, I have heard others defend it as well, so I guess there are different opinions. But it seems to me that an extra level of heavy tanks will help a lot more than those three hundred resources or so you'll gain from production tech over the duration of the entire game.

[SeaMonkey]

Maybe a compromise, halfway for reinforcement/reformation, as the humans needed to fill the depleted ranks(training takes longer on higher tech weaponry) and I don't believe fertility drugs were available back then for human propagation(population limits, hiring mercenaries).

[acrashb]

Tank research, after the other helpful things mentioned to increase production. High-level tanks with experience (properly covered by fighters) are bulldozers.

[Hubert Cater]

That's not why it's useless: you can easily spend that much buying units in just one calendar year (tho it is of less value the later in the game, so then yeah). But Hubert awhile back (in PDE actually) made any repair/rebuild costs based on the default cost of the unit, not based on the production tech cost. So its effectiveness is about halved; I've argued with him that he should flip it back, as the tech would be applied to reinforcing materials/equipment which has been built using the new reduced costs/efficiences anyway (then shipped to the front), but he stuck to his guns.

From what I remember we had some real problems with the formulas with the old method, due to an inconsistency depending on research levels but off hand I can't remember the exact issue, and *I think* that was the primary motivation for changing to the current model.

Do you happen to remember more of the details or any thread in particular that might jog my memory a bit more?

[SeaMonkey]

Hubert, wasn't the underlying philosophy for PT vs Tech interaction that each level of PT cancelled out each additional cost for tech upgrades?

So for a corps built with the second level AT, IW, and Mot. upgrades, the additional MPP cost would be cancelled out by PT level 2 and equate to the same as the purchase price at 0 levels?

Now there's an incentive for PT investment, and its simple logic.

[John DiFool the 2nd]

From what I remember we had some real problems with the formulas with the old method, due to an inconsistency depending on research levels but off hand I can't remember the exact issue, and *I think* that was the primary motivation for changing to the current model.

Do you happen to remember more of the details or any thread in particular that might jog my memory a bit more?

http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=84719

[Hubert Cater]

Thanks John and SeaMonkey and I'll take another look at this because as time passes sometimes the older issues may no longer be problems due to some code changes or even in many cases from my end, a fresh crack/perspective at solving the original problems.

[Hubert Cater]

Just looking at this again and I can confirm that for reinforcement, when the reinforcement cost was tied into the Production Tech cost of the unit it did cause a lot of issues where it was indeed difficult to keep track which units were purchased with PT, which units were purchased with the soft build penalty and so on... so we just opted to have PT apply only to new purchases and leave everything else the same as trying to keep track of these values caused a lot of issues with the game engine in terms of keeping all the values straight. Basically there were a lot of errors that kept cropping up in game.

That being said I'm not 100% sure what changes were made from the older system to the newer system to what we now have in place but looking at the code and testing this in game I can confirm that the cost of a unit, i.e. what is looked at in terms of reinforcement cost is determined as follows:

-- unit cost = base cost

-- + research costs (research costs are relative to base cost)

-- + soft build penalty (relative to base cost)

-- - production tech benefits (relative to base cost)

In this case the full production tech benefits are applied before determining the unit cost that is looked at for reinforcment cost, i.e. the cost determined by the above formula is then multiplied by the reinforcement cost which is usually 5%.

Does this help?

Hubert

[jon_j_rambo]

What depends on Who. Cards are cards. Players play the player.

"That's poker folks" -Doyle Brunson

The American Dolly,

The Big Papa,

The Godfather,

The Living Legend,

JJR

[Hubert Cater]

Just wanted to add that it looks like I found a bug that will be corrected so that the above formula applies each time a unit is to be reinforced. For a few examples:

A) Corps 100 MPP w/ Level-1 PT (5%) costs -> 95 MPP

Corps 100 MPP w/ Level-5 PT (25%) costs -> 75 MPP

Reinforcing A) at a cost of 5% per reinforcement level is 4.75 MPP (4 MPP)

Reinforcing at a cost of 5% per reinforcement level is 3.75 MPP (3 MPP)

[Armuss]

I think good idea: by Production effect too Minor countries. For example: Level-1 PT UK - reduced all in UK units & Australia, Canada, India and so on...