Re: Radical Research

> 
> First I want to congratulate the developpers for this fantastic
> game. It's challenging, balanced, intelligent... I'm totally
> addicted !!
> I have a few questions for the experts:
> - What the hell is this option "Dip into saving" ? Can anybody
> explain to me in simple words ?

Each turn you have two pools of money to spend, your savings, and you income
for that turn.

Your income is what you spend using the sliders, dividing it between planet
support, tech spending, and incrementing your savings.

Normally, your savings is only used when you buy ships. But if you've saved
a lot in the past and want to use some of that savings (not just the
interest but actual principal) for tech spending or planet maintenance (to
speed up one or both of those operations), the you dip into savings.

> - What are the bonuses afforded by the different Radical Research
> programs ? For example, "increase saving interest rate" or "decrease
> borrowing rate", by how many ?

All the radical research gains are slightly helpful, but never game
deciding. For example, if you haven't noticed, savings is not actually a
regular percentage savings rate, as, if it were, due to the rules of
compound interest, it'd be an amazing advantage in the game. So savings is
based on a square root rule. Getting a better savings rate just gives you a
better multiplier on that.

Borrowing rate is a standard percentage, and decreasing that rate lowers it
a few percent.

> - What are the RR programs you prefer ? For me it depends... At the
> beginning of the game, a program like "improve terraforming"
> or "better mining" is just great while "biological ship" is just a
> waste. At the end of the game, it's just the reverse. But I can say
> my n°1 RR is "improve technology output".

Most of these improvements, as I said, are all nice, but none are game
changing and should not be researched expecting such. The one radical tech
that really has an important use is biological ships. If it's late in the
game and you're winning money-wise but have very little metal, building a
high-tech biological can sometimes win you the game, when it otherwise may
have ended in a stalemate.

> The programs I dislike the most are : "decoy ship" (useless except
> for one thing, the ship is very cheap and it helps me to occupy
> empty planet to check if the ennemy is coming or not) and "educate
> battle generals" (never understood how it works).

Decoy ships can actually help in battle, as they still have to be shot at
and thus waste one of your enemies shots that otherwise would have hit one
of your more important fighters. The can also look menacing when you play
multiplayer (on the Mac).

As for battle generals, every time you fight, each side gets either good
luck, neutral luck, or bad luck, a random element that affects your ability
to fight a bit. Better educated generals almost never get bad luck.

Hope this helps,

Peter




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