I don't normally purchase androids or scientists so I never noticed this before, but I have been looking into research effects recently since I took on an old account in the original uni. I set up an account in a few other old unis, too, to see what was going on, and what I saw was that tech levels appear to bottle neck in the lower to mid 20s on established accounts irrespective of uni speed or age. There is a very specific reason for that and it has everything to do with how the lab formula works and its effect on decreasing research times. To illustrate what I am talking about, I will show you an example which compares the difference between research times at different lab levels with and without bonuses and how bonuses diminish in effect along with the diminishing effects of lab level upgrades. The lab formula is as follows...
Time(hours) =
(Ore Cost + Crystal Cost) * (1 - Research Bonus%) /
1000 * (1 + Research Lab Level)
This is set-up similar to how capitol works with its effect on reducing build times... Its effect diminishes with each upgrade to the point where the question begs on whether further upgrades are worth the investment or not. It becomes a cost / benefit question which I have found that different players will place their values at different levels while the cost / benefit question doesn't even occur to other players at all because they haven't looked into it.
So here are the diminishing effects on tech upgrade times at different lab levels from wiki...
lab Research time no bonus
lab1 = 100%
lab2 = 66.67%
lab3 = 50%
etc...
So what does that mean for research times? Well, basically it means that if we take a hypothetical tech which takes 100 minutes to complete, it will take 100 minutes at lab level 1. If we upgrade to lab 2 before we start the tech upgrade, the time will decrease by 33.33%. Sounds good, right? The differences are meaningful enough to justify the upgrades at the lower levels, but by the time you get to higher lab levels... at lab 50, for example, the time decrease is only 4% and decreases merely by another 3.92% if you upgrade to lab51.
So what does it mean for a 100minute research at higher lab levels? lol Well you would have to be mad to upgrade the labs to those higher levels for a 100minute tech, but what if the tech was already upgraded a few levels and the time for the next upgrade was now 10,000hrs... which is what some of them more or less are in the established unis. This hypothetical tech which takes the nice rounded number of 10,000hrs to upgrade for the sake of clarity... which is 416.666 days... will speed up a little reducing to 9,608 hrs if you upgrade the lab first, now taking only 400 days. That is a little over 2 weeks saved, but there are 365 days in a year and that 416.666 days equates to around 14months. Is it worth it for that sort of reduction given the time frame involved? Some think it is...
Those time frames were set at basic lab level time reductions without bonuses involved, but what happens if we factor in the 75% bonus cap? This is one element which I did find interesting...
We will have to imagine that the full 75% bonus cap is in effect at lab level 1 to demonstrate this, even though it isn't possible yet at lab level 1.
Lab research times with the full 75% bonus
Lab1 = 175.00%
Lab2 = 116.67%
Lab3 = 87.50%
etc...
At lab 1, the 75% decrease is staggering, but what is also happening is that the bonus itself is actually diminishing in effect with further lab upgrades. Will it reduce by 75% again at lab levels 2 and 3? Nope! Due to the diminishing effect of time reductions involved using the current lab formula, bonuses reduce along with it. At lab level 3, the 75% bonus effect is now at 87.5% compared with 50% for the lab with no bonus. The difference there between having the full bonus and no bonus becomes a 37.5%. The bonus effect reduces further with each lab upgrade until you get to lab 54 and the difference between having the full bonus and no bonus is about 3 %
Side by side for comparison...
lab Research time no bonus
lab1 = 100%
lab2 = 66.67%
lab3 = 50%
etc...
Lab research time full bonus
Lab1 = 175.00%
Lab2 = 116.67%
Lab3 = 87.50%
etc...
So what does all of this mean and why am I sharing this with everyone? Does anyone even care,? lol Well, you should do... because you may or may not be wasting tons of hydro for diminishing returns, but that is a cost /benefit question for you to ask yourself. Everyone will have their own views on this.
It also shows that bonuses are more effective at lower lab levels than higher lab levels, so if you're going to purchase a scientist or you win one in the lucky draw, it will give you a better effect the earlier you use it.
Finally... why are we even looking at tech upgrade times consisting of 10,000 hrs or more? Surely this is not in balance with current levels of inflation in unis which have NPCs?
So how could we bring research times into balance with current levels of inflation in NPC universes?
Well... you would think the obvious good start would be to get rid of NPCs, but what I also found was that tech levels in all unis bottle neck around the lower to mid 20s in every uni, irrespective of speed, age, and NPCs so the fundamental problem with research times being out of balance with the rest of the game has nothing to do with NPCs and has everything to do with the lab formula.
How can we resolve this?... The best way to do it is to adjust the formula itself so that lab upgrades work on tech upgrades in the same way that foundry upgrades work on buildings. I do appreciate that this approach would be disastrous for fresh unis so the best way to do it is to adjust it only in the established unis. Maybe there is even a way for the developers to have this foundry effect take effect on labs when a certain lab level is reached so that the higher level labs become more of a cost / benefit? It would be nice to be able to cut a 10,000 hr tech upgrade in half, lol
Thanks for reading
Grace