Civ-style research vs MoO-style research vs SMAC style reseach

[Lemmy]

Originally posted by JellyDonut

Perhaps, but not in older techs. Nobody said, "Let's research the Wheel" and a few decades later a wheel was born. Anyone who knows what a wheel is knows the basic concept and creating one would not take decades. And a lot of the techs were not researched by any government. Tell me what government chose to develop Communism or Electricity.

Well, nobody really knows how the wheel was invented, it could be chief that wanted a better way to carry resources around, and some tribal came up with the wheel.

But good point about Communism and Electricity.
Maybe the techs could be divided in two categories, those that government can research and those that can only be researched by citizens ( more or less random, depending on the state of your civ ), cos over the course of history, most weapons were researched by the government, but other more daily stuff is usually the work of entrepeneurs or independent scientists.

You could also look at the research in Civ like this :
Somewhere in your civ a new discovery is made by someone, let's say a Mr E discovers Electricity, he could never fully exploit this deiscovery on his own and contacts the government and ask if they want to fund his research. But before he does that, he tries to come up with practical uses for Electricity to convince the government.
And that is what you see when you have to select a new research goal, a potential discovery with their practical uses already known.

[Trifna]

I think that the closest to reality is that you can give general orientations, since you pratically never work on ONE thing, since you would lose the potential of scientists that aren't interested to work in this particular field but more in annother. The thing you can do is to give more funds to researchers of a field or annother. Like our governments which give priorities, but wouldn't be idiot enough to lose all these potential scientists that aren't specialized especifically in the general of researches demanded.

Secondly, there are some research that you can be more precise on. These are the ones that you can anticipate alot from the knowledge you already have. Like such projects as space projects, in which we put alot of money in many prototypes and tests, judging the ones that have more chances. Such as the atomic bomb also. Or such as stealth of planes or of the possibility to build faster computers, since we already found some ways to make faster computers and stealthier planes.

So, all this should depend on the tech and many types of techs should exist. Also, if you would put all your funds to ONE place, you would lose your scientists in some other fields while puting so much money elsewhere that even low-grades scientists would have totally paid researches, which implicts more losses.

This is reality. How to we implement a good model in Civ III? Well I guess that we could give general directions, give a certain % to each general field of researches for exemple. We could be more precise with some techs also. At which point? Well you could have a better % of chance of effectively get what you were aiming for, getting a certain % of discovery that becomes higher and higher with time and ressources invested, so no "will get tech in 3 years". Maybe that some could be as precise at in Civ I-II. Would there be maluses when puting an excessive amount of money for the researchers you have? Would the first 10-20% have a bonus? Would the 60% or 70% profit more than the 80th % and so on? Could be good... This is up to Firaxis. Hope you like my model. It's realistic. But gheez, can be hard to implement realistically and balanced.

Signed:

Trifna,
Realism purist perfectionist.

PS: Of course, some will be glad to be able to togle this option off for some different strategic playing :-P

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Grumbold
In modern times discoveries have become far more definable because labs involving hundreds of staff and thousands of experiments are now possible. You can actively target the specific outcome you are looking for. Aiming for a new metallic alloy you are not going to find an advanced plastic or medical technique instead. Since SMAC is set in a high tech future I find its blundering around very strange except when related to the planetary life forms which is certainly a whole new field.

That's not exactly true. There are many levels of researches. Broadly speaking, basic research and applied research. Basic research is just a bunch of boffins locking themselves up in a lab and mess around. You can never tell what actually comes out of basic researches other than the general areas. Applied research is what you do after you have a new discovery or invention.

For example, nobody expected superconductivity. However, once it's found, scientists can start looking for applications.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Grumbold
In modern times discoveries have become far more definable because labs involving hundreds of staff and thousands of experiments are now possible. You can actively target the specific outcome you are looking for. Aiming for a new metallic alloy you are not going to find an advanced plastic or medical technique instead. Since SMAC is set in a high tech future I find its blundering around very strange except when related to the planetary life forms which is certainly a whole new field.

That's not exactly true. There are many levels of researches. Broadly speaking, basic research and applied research. Basic research is just a bunch of boffins locking themselves up in a lab and mess around. You can never tell what actually comes out of basic researches other than the general areas. Applied research is what you do after you have a new discovery or invention.

For example, nobody expected superconductivity. However, once it's found, scientists can start looking for applications. Another, more recent example is the discovery of electron neutrinos changing into muon and tau neutrinos. That probably doesn't have any applications (yet), but posts a major problem for the Standard Model of Quantum Physics.