Researching Facilities

From Beyond Protocol

Your mineral sector is where all your minerals are discovered. As time goes on you will get special promotions for this sector which will allow you to hire more geologists. Next to the mineral branch is the alloy sector. This sector works closely with the factories and refineries of your colony to help create and manufacture fusions of minerals. As time goes on, this sector will get technology advancements that will allow better fusions to occur.

The engine sector is where all of your engines, both structural and unit power, are designed. As technology becomes available, this sector will be able to increase the power output for structural and increase the speed, maneuver and thrust capabilities of your units. The shield development sector and the hull design sector, as well as the engine sector, talk with each other constantly to keep up to date on the latest advancements.

The shield sector at times may get ahead of the engine or hull sector, so don’t give up hope if a breakthrough occurs and you cannot yet implement it. It should be noted that the hull and prototype sectors of the research facility are in constant communication with not only each other but with the rest of the sectors. They are the supplier of all of the designs and physical models.

The weapon sector, is the largest sector of the research facility. The advancements offered might be determined by what type of weapons you have called for most often. Radar and navigation systems are probably the hardest to advance in terms of fine-tuning due to the many variations of radar.

Now that we have discussed the different sectors of the research facility, let’s focus on how intelligence works. You may have noticed on your colony window (F6) an entry that says Intelligence. You may be wondering why your intelligence goes up or down when research facilities are added or turned off. The reason is because not every colonist has the ability to be a researcher.

If you have an abundance of jobs for research, the research facilities will acquire whatever talent they can until they have enough warm bodies doing the work of the facility. If the research facility hires too many people, they will be required to lower their standards because the supply of the smartest people is finite. This is how intelligence is actually calculated. To counter this you need to offset and introduce a separation effect – namely build factories or other job supporting facilities to help sort out your rocket scientists, while sending your unqualified population to other various jobs. Your base intelligence starts at 100 and will max out at 160. The goal is to provide enough “normal” jobs so scientists, and only scientists, can be introduced into the facilities. This is hampered when numerous research facilities are added at one given time. However, by doing this you may increase the speed of the research, which was discussed in an earlier section. Also you can raise your starting intelligence potentially by redesigning a new research facility.

Using Multiple Research Facilities

What do you do when you have multiple research missions that need to be done and another colony might not be able to handle the job? Build more research centers of course. However, if it were that simple there would not need to be a section in this guide to talk about it.

Beyond Protocol allows for multiple research centers and allows them to do multiple researches simultaneously. This has great potential when you need a job rushed, and do not have time to wait for things like hot combat zones to get results.

Let’s go through a sample of how to breakdown the time reduction vs. costs. The research you need done costs 100 credits and if done by one facility will take five days. It imperative research and you really would like to cut down your wait time. Here is one choice you could make… add the research to five facilities – remember you have to pay the 100 credits to each facility you add to the research. For this example, your cost will be 500 credits. Research costs also involve minerals as well. If this research cost 500 copper in minerals, each time you added it to a facility 500 copper was deducted from your available resources. Obviously, this can get expensive depending on the research you are trying to accomplish, however the money spent might save you precious time.

Here is another consideration to take into account in analyzing your options. If you put your research in one facility, it takes the entire predicted time for the research to take place. However, with the power of using multiple facilities you can shorten the process. One facility by itself runs at only 50% of its full capabilities. When you attach a second facility onto the research it runs 50%, however, it raises the first facility to 100% output. Your time of completion has now dropped to five two and a half days instead of the original ten. After the second facility is added the percentage of time reduction decreases by half, in other words a third facility added would cut 25% more off the completion time, a fourth cuts 12.5% and so forth. This reduction can also be boosted by several other factors such as better research facilities that produce more points, factions and guilds, which will be discussed later.