How does research work?

[Peter Stauffenberg]

I noticed that if I play a game with random research it seems like the research will progress much faster. Is that true?

I read that with random research the progress is either 1, 8 or 15.

How does research for each area advance when we don't select random research? It advances very slowly. How is difficulty affecting research. Is the difficulty a number saying the percent change that the area will NOT advance that turn? E. g. organization has a difficulty of 55 while many others have about 30.

Which benefits do you get by having several labs in one group. Does this give you several research advancement chances per turn? E. g. a general level of 3 will give you 3 advancement chances for industry, organization and radar? Are these chances accumulative so you may be lucky and get 3x15 advancement to one area if you play with random research?

I haven't fully understood the difference between random research and regular research. Does random research mean you can put focus to one research area.

How does the focus affect research? I read the rules said that usually each area has 33% of success, but with focus in increases to 50% for this area and only 25% for the other 2 areas. How does this correlate to the difficulty factor for the research.

Does the difficulty factor influence the max number of points that area may be increased. I thought a high difficulty means it increases slower, but I don't know how.

The reason I ask this is because my clever opponent, Happycat, seems to be much better than me to achieve good research results in vital areas for him. I buy labs and even set focus for the important areas, but I feel the research is advancing so slowly. Sometimes the area with the focus is the one advancing more slowly that the other 2 areas.

[firepowerjohan]

The manual is wrong in this case, the 50%-25%-25% when focusing research and the normal 33%-33%-33% is not the chance of progress but the distribution of the research points.

So if you have 2 labs in air with balanced focus means for example dog fight will get 2*0.33=0.66 RP multiplied by the luck factor. Say you roll 8 for dog fight this turn you will get 0.66*8=5.28 RP on Dog Fight this turn. The difficulty is the RP needed for level.

So if you get 5.283 RP in Dog Fight and dog fight has difficulty 25 that means you are 5.28/25~0.21 which means 21% so your lucky jump managed to increase from 0 to 21% in Dog Fight this turn.

Comparably if you rolled a 1 instead of a 8 then you would only get 2.6% per turn, and this is the normal luck.

The roll for each tech is the following
1-26 = 1 RP per lab
27-29 = 8 RP per lab
30 = 15 per lab


When you do not use the random research you instead get a steady pace instead of 1, 8, 15. Currently that pace is set at 2 RP. As a side note, the average RP when using random research is 2.2 RP per lab so random research is slightly quicker. Opinion?

[Peter Stauffenberg]

That explains a lot. Thank you.

But I wonder what kind of die (dice) do you use as the luck die. Is it 1d10, 2d6 or maybe something else?

[davetheroad]

My experience is that random research is a LOT quicker because it is random!
You can get 2 or 3 lucky hits in 1 area and get a tech level quickly
In random research you might as well not concentrate on 1 area

[firepowerjohan]

Again, random research at 2.2 vs 2.0 for non random might actually even out. Think about it, you have 99% progress in Dog Fight and several labs and then you get the 15 roll, say you get a huge 50% increase for dog fight. 99+50=149% and you advance a level but next level start at 0%. So your 49% above 100% was wasted and this does not happen as much with non random research.