Losing massive quantities of research points ...

[Misotu]

I've been noticing in one of my MP games that I'm not accumulating the right numbers of research points. Didn't pay it too much attention at first ... until I started to have a sneaking suspicion that we're talking *thousands* of missing research points. SP, you can live with that. But not MP.

So I checked my games. Here's the deal. Over the last six turns, I have lost a grand total of 2,284 RP - last turn alone I lost 967 RP. Yes indeed. Thousands of the little buggers have vanished, into thin air.

This can't go on! I need to know what horrible strategic mistake I have made here, so I'm hoping someone can enlighten me.

Now ... I've built the Supercollider and ToE in one base. That's nothing new, I've done it before in MP and it worked fine. But this time, I didn't build them in my HQ. I came up with a Very Cunning Plan to site my super-science base on the coast to take advantage of a thermocline and sea foils. Energy parks on both land and sea, all feeding into my single base. OK, you get a little energy loss, but look at the advantages. How could it fail?



Yeah, well. Last turn my science base generated 1212 RPs and I lost 967 RPs from my accumulated research. Very annoying - I should have had two techs this turn, but only the one showed up.

I seem to remember Zsozso saying something, ages ago, about the game preventing you from discovering more than one tech per base. So if you have a huge science city which is generating enough RPs for two or more techs per turn in its own right, the game does not permit you to discover more than one.

That's not the case here. My super science base is generating only a little over a third of my total RPs (1212 vs 3097 total RPs) and just over half the RPs required to get a single tech (1212 vs 2135 tech cost).

I suppose this could just be a one-off bug in this particular game. But I can't believe that - it's the standard tourny 3-player map, I've done exactly the same before (except in my HQ) and this did not happen. Trust me, I'd have noticed and so would the other guys I was playing.

I have a horrible feeling that the game does something weird when you discover a tech. Like maybe, just maybe, forgets all the remaining RPs collected in the base that it's processing when the tech is discovered except where that base is your HQ?

Could this be true? And if so, I want the name of the developer who put this in. Also, the home address and the location of the children's school.

Any other suggestions/comments gratefully received. I really want to understand this - losing 30% of my RPs per turn for no reason in MP is not an experience I want to repeat.
<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by Misotu (edited October 26, 2000).]</font>

[big_canuk]

:double post



[This message has been edited by big_canuk (edited October 26, 2000).]

[big_canuk]

Pactmate Misotu:

I believe you are talking about our game. And, I suspect that your suspicions are correct. I believe I read on this forum long ago, that when you discover a tech, only 10 RPs are carried forward from that base (similar to the limit of 10 mins carried forward at a base). Therefore, you will be stuck at 1 tech per turn, until you can get your other bases up to the cost of a tech! Time to start rehoming some of those crawlers to other bases. Its ashame they will produce only 1/2 the RPs though.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Mis,

This was described a long time ago (in a galaxy far far away ). Seriously though, I believe the way the game calculates tech advance and research is that it accumulates RP as it goes through it base calculations with the progression starting from HQ on through later founded bases. If at anytime there are enough RP's to gain a new tech any additional RP's for that particular base are truncated/lost. So that beiing said if your super science city was bringing in 1200 RP's/turn and only 300 were required to finish off your tech advance then the remaining 900 get lost in the process.

In the long run it really doesn't matter which base you choose as your SSC, they all will suffer from the truncation effect sooner or later, hence the recommendation of some folks to spread the 'Collider & TOE out 'mongst seperate bases. My feeling personally is I'ld rather have the multiplicative effects even with the possibility of truncation losses.

Og

[Black Sunrise]

If it is an issue with the HQ, try moving it. That'll decrease your inefficiency, as well.

[VoodooChild]

Unfortunately, moving the capital won't help. The order of the bases during your upkeep is oldest to newest. Food for thought next time around

[Misotu]

Friend CanHack: Yeah, you got me It's AXT007 all right. Bummer, bummer, bummer, and more bums What's a girl to do? I mean, I'll have to live with it. But dammit!

Ogie: Huh. Well, it must have been a bloody far away galaxy because, trust me, if I'd read it I'd have remembered it It's enough to make you read the archives ...

Only kidding.

Oh well. In the one post on the subject that I did read, Zsozso only mentioned the effect once you're over the tech per base mark. He didn't mention the rest, dammit.

Urk. Choke. Gargle.

Well, I agree with you. The multiplicative effect is well worth having, particularly in the mid-game ... but the choice of base is still moot. Last time I did this, it was in my HQ and if it happened, it jolly well wasn't as noticeable as this time. I wish I were better at maths ... I mean, if your best lab base is *always* first ... does this mean you lose fewer RPs overall or not??? Probability-wise, my instinct says it should be evenly spread. Is that right?

I suppose it actually depends on the cost per tech vs tech per turn. If the two are more or less parallel, then I guess you wouldn't notice the effect ... I wish I could remember AXT011 research rates better now.

Black Sunrise: My inefficiency is scarcely worth mentioning. It's tiny on the scale of things, I'm the Gaians and although I'm running planned, I'm also running no-penalty Cybernetic. My bases are pretty close together. And I'm on an island. My HQ is slap in the centre. My super-science base is way off to the side. No way I'm moving the HQ, particularly not now I Know What I Know.

My only annoyance now is that I didn't save all the turns of AXT011, where I did the same thing, but in my HQ. Or another game, where I only had one of the labs SPs and we were all around the tech per turn mark with the occasional extra tech from accumulated RPs. Now the thing is that both those other games were extremely tight and transcendence games. And we were counting *every* RP. In ACT003 I was actually jiggling my energy in each base to maximise my labs *while minimising the labs of my pact brothers*. That's how tight it was. So how come I didn't notice this effect before, when the SP was in my HQ? Maybe it has to get to really big numbers before something taps on my thick skull. I'd really like to check that. Bleh. I'm going to have to wait for another game.

Bah! Pah! Swear words, lots of them

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Mis,

You may want to simply consider energy allocating to more energy for econ to still allow 1tech/turn but get some useful cash as well in order to salvage some of that otherwise wasted truncated energy.

Which brings up a good discussion point on the value of paradigm efficiency in late game to avoid losing energy to the truncation effect by otherwise channeling excesses into econ.

I believe you stated you are playing the gaians and are at Cybernnetic so I assume Demo/planned/???/Cyber means you have a paradigm economy and can do so.

Jus a thought

Og

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

If you assume that you max out RP gains to the point where you are near parallel with tech advance cost (i.e. 1 tech per turn matched up fairly closely through allocation to econ appropriately), then having your first base (i.e. HQ) as your SSC makes good sense.

Assume tech cost is say 2000 and that your SSC contributes nearly 1000 RP. Then the likelihood of a large truncation is fairly small if you start with an empty or near empty research accumulation bar at the start of every turn. HQ gets calculated first bringing in the full 1000 other bases bring in lesser amounts and towards the end of your base calculationyou hit the magic 2000 RP level making the truncation a small matter (a few odd RP's for the assumedly smaller crappier newest bases you have at the end of the calculational routine).

I often have been a devotee of paradigm eff. for the reason that it allows you to do this juggle. If you want to squeeze as much out as you can, you always want to set the ratios to the lowest possible research/econ ratio that still allows the tech per turn rate that your looking for. For example, you may have the same research rate of 1 tech every 2 turns for ratios of 30 econ/70 research, 40 econ/60 research/ 50econ/50 research. If you choose to run the 30/70 scenario you may end up with a time when you get a tech per turn but you also run the risk of a truncation if you have a large SSC contribution depending on how the overage hits during the RP calculation. As I don't like to micromange to the point of adjusting every base I tend to go for the simpler method of adjsuting the econ/research ratio to allow parallelism and better energy for rush builds.

Og

[VoodooChild]

Ogie, I agree with your overall point (play with the allocations to get the same tech rate and more credits), but there some other things that need to be factored in.

Anytime you have a SSC you run the risk of lost RPs reguardless of which city you use. After you have enough research points to learn a tech, any base still left in your upkeep will contribute their RPs to the next tech. So even though the order of which bases contribute is always the same, where they fall within each tech will vary widely.

Also HQ do not always go first in the order. Its oldest to youngest city. And it sould be noted, that this is based on what year a base was created for those bases you taken from other factions.

So should you invest in a SSC? YES! There are still things yo can do to ensure that you get the most from your RPs, but this requires a little micro management - Adjust your allocations each turn.

If you always keep your labs at the lowest posible % and still get the same rate, then there will be less waste of RPs, and it is almost assured that your SSC is contributing ALL of its RPs. There will be fall off from whatever base finishes the tech, but this should be minor since its not your SSC.

If you are a complete micro manager, then you can adjust your specialist around so that you use all of a bases RPs to finish a tech, but this requires a lot of time and is not nessisary.

[Provost Harrison]

Well the answer to this one is quite simple, when you complete a research at a particular base, the extra research points generated at that base are not passed over to the next tech. Simple, see?

------------------
Provost (Harrison):

CivII and SMAC forum moderator at www.civgaming.net

Go there godammit!

[Misotu]

Ogie: Thanks for this, and yeah, I know this is what I should be doing. I guess the problem has not come up in the past because my HQ is first to go in the order, and I'm optimising my SE settings between econ and research based on the cost per tech. So ... no losses. At all. Even though I wasn't aware that there was a potential problem.

But when your SSC isn't your HQ, it's much harder to get it right because there are so many bases involved. It's easy to juggle the SE settings between econ/labs when you're only looking at the effect on one base (your HQ). When the base you're interested in is 8 places down the queue (aarggh!) you're talking masses of fiddling around. If you use the crude allocation method, you have to redo the calculation for all the bases involved each time you change the settings until you get it right ...

See, if you have an accumulation of 1300, a tech cost of 2100 and a labs/turn of 3100, and your SSC is eighth (say) in the upkeep order ... it's going to be quite tricky to get the tech to build at exactly the right point to minimise losses ... In fact .... it's in exactly the wrong place, of course, come to think of it. (Well, I guess that's obvious from my losses!) Which means that I'll have to do something dramatic to get it shifted to a better position, then aim to get just 1 tech per turn ...

I assume the default F4 display (ie without using any "best bases" settings) shows the actual build order? For some reason, I've had the impression that this isn't always true, but I couldn't swear to it. Probably my imagination.

It can be done. Thanks to everyone for the assistance.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Voodoo,

I agree compeletely with all your above statements. In fact, I was attempting throughmy ramblings to say the exact same thing.

My point I was trying to make was to match RP generation to approximate the research points needed to gain a tech or an even multiple though the allocation game. In doing so if your first base ( I assumed it as a HQ but not necessarily so) is your SSC then the large RP contributor base should always be fully counted. Thereby ensuring that RP's lost from truncation is minimal from the lower RP contributing bases.

You said it much better than I my friend.

Og

[VoodooChild]

Misotu,

Once a base (any base) contributes enough points to learn a tech, you will be notified of its dicovery. All remaining RPs from that base will be lost. The next base during your upkeep will then put its RPs to the new tech.

If you are using a SSC and have a good efficiency, then every turn you should be looking at your allocations. Move the bar back and forth to get the quickest research rate while bringing in the income you want. During mid and late games you can have the same discovery rate with a lab allocation of 50% or 70%. Of course 50% is better since you can gain more income or more happiness with a lower lab setting.

Also keep checking your research reports. If you are two turns away from a discovery go back into your energy allocations. Shift your labs DOWN one, then go back to your research report. If the number of turns until dicovery increased, then go back to your formor lab allocation. If it stays the same then go back and decrease it another 10%. Repeat this the next turn when your discovery is one turn away.

The whole point of this exercise is to have your SSC contribute ALL of its hard earned RPs to your techs, while some other base down the line has a proportion of its RP go to waste. The order in which your bases contribute is not as important as where within each tech they contribute. By using this technique, your SSC wont be the last.

[Misotu]

Hi VoodooChild

Thanks for the comments. I understand how to tweak the SE settings - the only thing I hadn't realised was that you actually lose the remaining RPs from the base in upkeep when the tech is discovered.

What I had been told (or perhaps I misunderstood) was that you couldn't discover more than 1 tech per turn *in a single base*. Quite different I shall know next time ...