Research Project

This article aims to explain the technicalities of how to launch a successful research project.

Scientists' stats

The real make or break element of a research project is the stats of the scientists you assign to it. This segment will tell you how to use them to your benefit.

Description of stats

• ING - Ingenuity is the measure of genius in your scientist. A higher ING stat may improve your project beyond what other skills would suggest.
• AGR - Agriculture is critical for any good farm, but can also have an effect on other prints that involve working on the soil and crust of a planet.
• MIN - Mining is primarily useful when developing some kind of resource extractor.
• PRC - A high processing stat will reduce the cost of a print.
• PRD - Production affects the mass of a print.
• PHY - Any print that needs to get the most out of the laws of physics will benefit from the physics skill.
• CHE - Chemics is required for things like creating medicines and making things go boom.
• MED - Medicine is for prints that require medicines, above-average life support  and such.
• WEA - Any weapon print or print that mounts weapons is goint to need the weapons stat to do that effectively.
• DRI - Anything that moves needs an engine, so the drive skill is required for most (if not all) ship prints.
• CON - Construction is the go-to skill for anything that needs building. It is really a cornerstone of any science team, and is used in most prints.

How to use the stats

Every print depends on a certain set of skills, so for any project you would want to assign the scientists with the highest possible skills in each important area. Each scientist on the project adds to every category, but there are diminishing returns. The math is as follows:

This list of percentages shows how much each stat of your scientists counts in each field of research:

1. 100% 
2. 50% 
3. 25% 
4. 12.5% 
5. 6.25% 

With those numbers in mind, when the v2 science is figuring out the total for each stats it first arranges all of the scientists in order, highest to lowest. Then it goes from the top to the bottom, and takes a percentage of the stat each scientist has. If the top 5 in my construction field were 20, 19, 19, 18, 10 - it would do the following. 

• 20*100% = 20 
• 19*50% = 9.5 
• 19*25% = 4.75 
• 18*12.5% = 2.25 
• 10*6.25% = .625

So, while adding many scientists who are good in one field, it has diminishing returns. As having more scientists on your project increases the time spent researching, it is up to each player to decide how many are really necessary.

Budget

The budget of your project increases the potential quality of your print, but it also might lengthen the time it takes to finish it.

Project Duration

Project duration depends on how many scientists are assigned, and how large the budget is. The larger either number is, the longer the project will take. However, this duration is only the maximum amount of time it may take. Projects finish at a random time within the duration window. This is calculated when the project is created. Some projects finish in one economy tick, while others go the full duration.

Research facility

For attaining top-level prints, only the effectiveness of the research facility matters. Number of workers only affects the number of scientists you can have on a project, so it is mostly a conideration early-game and when training scientists.

Level-ups

As scientists work on projects, they have a chance to level up, and gain better skills.They can do this in several ways; through working on any project, and through learning from other scientists on a project.