Configurable difficulty (speed) of research

[llunak]

TLDR: Can you please make difficulty/speed of research configurable the same way it's possible to select stress and immunity in the custom game setup?

I find the speed of research in the game way too fast, especially if one already knows the research tree and how it works. With just one scientist I can get the crucial techs ready within 10 cycles, by cycle 30 I don't care anymore what exactly the next research topic is and around cycle 50 I can demolish the research stations. This means that the early game practically doesn't exist, because I can simply sort of sit out the beginning with the very basics and then I can already build with pretty much anything I need. In other words, there's not much challenge/danger after a couple of cycles, only improving the base more and more.

I assume that one reason for the current research speed is also because this is an early access game with frequent updates, so it makes sense that people get things relatively quickly. Fair enough, but I think it'd be nice for us experienced players if we could also get a challenging game in this regard. Configurable stress and immunity are nice, but IMO it's research which is the main difficulty factor and measurement of the game progress.

I think two suitable research speeds would be getting everything researched around cycle 250 and around cycle 1000. That would correspond to research speeds of 15% and 2% (estimates, it wouldn't be linear 50->250 => 20%, as dupes level up both in skills and jobs).

Thank you.

 

[Kazumiya]

No need ; for 2 reasons : 

 - One : that's just you rushing researches even before you really need them (plastic HELLO) 

 - Two : More builds and trees of Researches will be available on further updates.

[crypticorb]

I do agree that it would be nice to have more world generation control, with research speed as one of the controllable variables.

Instead of having a flat increase in research times, there should be encouragement to explore BEFORE certain types of research even become available. For example, decontamination should be locked until the first slimelung or slime is encountered. Oil and plastic refining should be locked until we break into the oil biome. Animal control should be locked until we discover animals that need to be trapped/lured.

I do realize that this would require a significant rebalancing of the tech tree as it currently stands, but it could provide the challenge that Ilunak wanted, rather than just squatting on the starting resources until the whole tree is unlocked.

[TG pro]

agree

[Oozinator]

I bet when final, there could be similar worldgen options like in DS..

[TheExceed]

2 hours ago, crypticorb said:

I do agree that it would be nice to have more world generation control, with research speed as one of the controllable variables.

Instead of having a flat increase in research times, there should be encouragement to explore BEFORE certain types of research even become available. For example, decontamination should be locked until the first slimelung or slime is encountered. Oil and plastic refining should be locked until we break into the oil biome. Animal control should be locked until we discover animals that need to be trapped/lured.

I do realize that this would require a significant rebalancing of the tech tree as it currently stands, but it could provide the challenge that Ilunak wanted, rather than just squatting on the starting resources until the whole tree is unlocked.

It would have to rebalance a lot of it tbh. I like to have plastic researched before I even go into the oil biome. Since high pressure vents require plastic.. I use them for my oxygen creation system. I like having everything researched for it before I find an AETN and I search for that and a geyser before I go down to oil. So recipes would need to be rebalanced for that too, imo.