Research

= SR2020 Warfare Guide - Research = Submitted by Balthagor on Mon, 01/14/2013 - 09:00

Research Centers
All research, including Unit design research is performed at military Research Centers and these facilities are controlled from the Research Department.

The more research centers that you construct, the more Projects that your will be able to research at one time. Forty RCs is the most that you are likely to need.

Spending
In addition to constructing Research centers, you must also fund your research efforts. Depending upon how many RCs you operate, this can be a enormously expensive undertaking.

Research funding can be apportioned in three different ways: Efficiency, Technology Level and Project Development. Efficiency spending speeds all research and reduces its cost. Tech-Level spending is directed at improving the quality of your research centers - incorporating newly discovered technologies into them so that they can move to new levels of technical achievement. Project development funding goes directly to finance projects-in-progress and speed them to completion.

Available to Research
Most unit designs only become available for research at a certain inherent Tech level and often require you to research or otherwise acquire various base technologies required for the unit's research and construction (prerequisites). Long before they become available these potential Projects are listed in the Available to Research Sub-Panel. This list contains the names of various areas of study such as "Technology" and "Medicine", each of which expand into a list of potential research projects.

See Research Panels.

Military Designs
The Military Designs sub-panel is structured similar to the "Available to Research" one, but instead of research subject headers, its list box contains the names of unit classes that each expand to display potential unit designs that can be selected to become research projects on their own.

Since research is both expensive and time-consuming, it is important to research only those unit designs and other projects that most benefit your Region. In general it is efficient to research the latest model of each class of unit, when the new unit's specifications are markedly superior to what you have in the field or what is currently in your research queue.

Unit designs can also be traded for or stolen via espionage from other Regions. Trading and selling designs can be quite lucrative. The going price for these projects is often based upon the cost of the original research so the price can be in the billion-dollar range.

Transferring physical Units to other Regions is a fairly straight-forward proposition; however when you trade a unit design to another Region then its prerequisite technology is transferred with it. So if you trade the design for a phaser tank to another, then you are also giving them Phaser Technology and all of the technologies associated with that technology.

Technical Readout
A Unit's large, complete Technical Readout window:

Technical Readout

appears whenever you double-click on a unit design name. This window is packed with information regarding the combat performance of the selected unit and includes such vital statistics as technical level, cargo capacity, fuel usage, speed, offensive and defensive values, manufacturing details, country of origin, movement time, reaction time, default strength, stealth, spotting strength and plane and missile capacity.

Use the Unit Technical Readout to research the units best suited to your intended use. Front-line combat units should possess both range, attack and defense values. Recon units need speed and range. Artillery should possess good range and defense values as well as carry a lot of supplies.

Infantry needs high close attack and close defense values in order to neutralize dug-in enemy garrison troops.

Aircraft should possess good range and be hard to target. "Profile" is another word for stealth - the higher the Profile specification, the more stealthy an aircraft will be.

Missile platforms such as ships must be capable of loading the size of missiles that you are fabricating. Missiles for hitting specific targets must be direct-fire.

For more information see Unit Statistics and Specifications.