Research and Surplus Scientists

[TheOverlord (OP)]

In Aurora C# the "Leader Teams" where abolished (which I think was great), but one of the side-effects it that it led to a big surplus of scientists where you'll usually have 3 or 4 scientists with the same specializations but only use the best one.  An extreme example would be the game I just started, where I began as a Conventional empire with 8 labs and 22 scientists
So I was thinking about how to put them to use and also make research a bit more interesting and arrived at the following proposal:

Instead of being allocated multiple labs, each scientist would man only a single lab.  Research projects would be done by a head scientist's lab, which would be allocated other supporting labs.  The Administration Rating of scientists would be on steps of 1 (instead of 5) and would indicate how many labs (including its own) that scientist can manage as a project lead (a Rating 1 scientist would only be able to work on a project alone, a Rating 2 would be able to have one assistant lab, etc).  There could also be Rating 0 scientists who would not be able to be project leads themselves but would be able to assist other scientists until they get more experienced, and you could also put labs without scientists as supporting labs though those would not get any research bonus.  And of course, labs allocated for support must be on the same body as their lead's lab.

This would give a purpose for having lots of redundant specialty scientists, and I also believe it would make research more interesting as players would be forced to spread out their research more instead of pouring all their labs into one or two projects and beelining stuff.  It would most likely also require a rebalancing of Research Points and Research Costs though.

[skoormit]

I would love to be able to do *something* with my b-list scientists.
I like the idea of having them assist on a project led by another.

However, I don't think we should restrict scientists to 1 lab.
Beelining is a feature that some of us like, and those of us that don't can always use house rules.

Maybe instead of assigning assistants to a lab, you just add them to a project. An assistant on a project adds a portion of their research bonus--perhaps as a linear bonus, rather than multiplicative, and perhaps limited in effect by the assistant's admin rating.
For example a 10% Bonus, Admin 10 scientist adds a 10% bonus on up to 10 labs on the project.

[kenlon]

Actually, having science teams back could be neat. You can group up your scientists and get a portion of the lower ranking one's bonus added to whoever is leading the project perhaps? Could balance it by having assistants be able to gain skill but not be able to gain admin, so if you want one of your young geniuses to be able to run a large project, you have to set them up with a project all their own.

[Jorgen_CAB]

I think that research could be redone a bit so you actually want to do multiple research at the same time.

The administration rating could be replace by something else such as research efficiency so they can use more labs but in a more dynamic way.

Make it so that the more labs you give a researcher the less RP they gain modified by the research efficiency.

Make it so that labs belong to a specific field and changing labs to another field will cost you some industrial production in the same way you convert conventional industries you can convert labs to different fields.

This way having many researchers will be beneficial as the more project you have the more efficiently you use the labs that you have... training the scientist is also part of this.

As we also can increase or decrease the overall research speed we can use that to set the pace of the overall research to fit whatever story we tell or the way we want research to progress in general in addition to this.

[Ri0Rdian]

This is an excellent idea.

15 years after starting my game, now at military academy 5 I have 63 (!!!) scientists in various fields. At most I have about 12 research projects going on, so that leaves 51 scientist sitting there dreaming up new theories instead of doing actual work. So 80% of my researchers are useless. Having SOMETHING for them to do, no matter how small would be better than current situation.

[vorpal+5]

I second the suggestions. And/Or they can be deployed in the field, as commander of archeology units?

[Migi]

I've never had a game where I started with more researchers than labs, I think your experience is extremely a-typical.

If you don't have enough scientists for your labs you'll have to deal with the unassigned labs interrupt every single construction cycle unless Steve also re-worked the starting commanders to include enough. Even then, one unlucky death and you're stuck in the interrupt cycle.

[Nori]

I'd love to see something to do with excess scientists. I rarely use more than 2 scientists per field and most of the time only use one. Yet you need more academies because you'll need a lot more naval/ground officers (and possibly civ admins). My current game is 108 years in and I have hundreds of scientists. I don't expect to use all of them, but being able to use more than 1-2 per field would be nice.

[Froggiest1982]

I'd love to see something to do with excess scientists. I rarely use more than 2 scientists per field and most of the time only use one. Yet you need more academies because you'll need a lot more naval/ground officers (and possibly civ admins). My current game is 108 years in and I have hundreds of scientists. I don't expect to use all of them, but being able to use more than 1-2 per field would be nice.

Personally I retire many of them when I am in your position. I havent built the science department yet so no sure you can use your scientist there. Mainly because I dont know what to use the science department for I guess

[Pedroig]

I'd love to see something to do with excess scientists. I rarely use more than 2 scientists per field and most of the time only use one. Yet you need more academies because you'll need a lot more naval/ground officers (and possibly civ admins). My current game is 108 years in and I have hundreds of scientists. I don't expect to use all of them, but being able to use more than 1-2 per field would be nice.

Personally I retire many of them when I am in your position. I havent built the science department yet so no sure you can use your scientist there. Mainly because I dont know what to use the science department for I guess

Science department directly effects survey speeds.

[Nori]

I'd love to see something to do with excess scientists. I rarely use more than 2 scientists per field and most of the time only use one. Yet you need more academies because you'll need a lot more naval/ground officers (and possibly civ admins). My current game is 108 years in and I have hundreds of scientists. I don't expect to use all of them, but being able to use more than 1-2 per field would be nice.

Personally I retire many of them when I am in your position. I havent built the science department yet so no sure you can use your scientist there. Mainly because I dont know what to use the science department for I guess

Science department directly effects survey speeds.

Which isn't all that useful unless you reduce survey speed IMO... But even so, how many science modules are you really going to use? 5?
I'd probably retire them, except there are too many and you have to do it one at a time..

[Jorgen_CAB]

I'd love to see something to do with excess scientists. I rarely use more than 2 scientists per field and most of the time only use one. Yet you need more academies because you'll need a lot more naval/ground officers (and possibly civ admins). My current game is 108 years in and I have hundreds of scientists. I don't expect to use all of them, but being able to use more than 1-2 per field would be nice.

Personally I retire many of them when I am in your position. I havent built the science department yet so no sure you can use your scientist there. Mainly because I dont know what to use the science department for I guess

Science department directly effects survey speeds.

Which isn't all that useful unless you reduce survey speed IMO... But even so, how many science modules are you really going to use? 5?
I'd probably retire them, except there are too many and you have to do it one at a time..

They are cheaper and smaller than a survey module... so why not... but I do agree that it makes more sense of you reduce survey times as an option... I only run with 5% in my games so there it definitely make sense... 

[liveware]

I would love to be able to do *something* with my b-list scientists.

Allowing scientists to man ship- or station- borne science labs seems a straightforward implementation concept to me. I admit I was disappointed when I discovered that I could not assign my useless biological scientists to man science departments on my survey ships.

[Jorgen_CAB]

The absolutely more easy solution is of course to reduce the number of labs that you can assign to scientists. If the amount of labs is reduced by 2/3 or so you would be forced to use more scientists.

If you feel science are moving along too slowly as it takes longer to research stuff there is always the option to raise the research rate... or lower it if you feel it is moving too fast anyway. I always now reduce the science rate significantly in my games, but also start with more population as well. As I get allot more academies I actually hit the roof for many scientists in the process and I think that lowering the number of labs or at least add it as an option in conjunction with the science rate could be good.

So... an additional option of how many labs scientists can use... so I could set it to 50%, then each scientist can now use half the number of labs from normal. Another interesting thing with this is that you can change it over time in the game as you advance the campaign and you feel that adding more labs to the scientists make sense for the pace of the game.

I also feel that when a scientist switch field they should regain some of that lost experience over time... let's say they gain double the chance to increase their skill over the next 10 years or so.

[Ri0Rdian]

Less labs don't sound that appealing to me, though I absolutely agree it is the easiest solution. On the other hand it would also fundamentally alter the way the game is played as well as its pace.


Edit:
@Jorgen_CAB

What pop levels do you use? I got for +- RL ones (so usually 8b) and the game is definitely not intended for this (The scaling gets worse the more you deviate from the standard 500-1000m bracket), though this is my strong feeling, I am too bad at math and too lazy to prove this.

Like I have to reduce research rate to about 15% (still slightly above the default rate given the number of labs I get), but the scientist % bonus as well as lab bonus (is there a max? I have no idea what it is and how hard it is to get there) sure must have a ceiling. Minerals are the biggest problem though, I can burn through my heavily % increased minerals on Earth in less than 20 years from game start (all of them, the least numerous ones much sooner) and there is no setting for galaxy mineral generation, only Earth. Though this probably requires its own topic, I might start one once I am done with my latest game (first real pop game in C).