A couple of questions

[Nikolaj]

I just bought the game yesterday, and I'm still trying to figure it out. I've been able to find the answer to most of my question by browsing the manual and using the in-game help function, but I still have a few that are left unanswered.

1) How does research work exactly? As I understand it, the actual research is increased by building space ports and research facilities, while potential research is decided by the size of your empire. However, it seems that when I build ports and facilities, the potential research increases, as well as the actual research. It almost seems like the actual research is a never changing fraction of the potential research. Can anybody explain this to me?

2) When you colonize a new system, a blue line appears, which connects it to the nearest system with a space port. What do these lines mean, exactly? Once, one of the lines dissappeared, leaving me with two unconnected clusters of colonies. I wasn't sure whether to be alarmed, since I'm not sure what the lines mean.

[HsojVvad]

1) I am not shure how research works, but I will give it a try. The tech you get from research is random. You can't pick what research you want, but you can sort of pick what research to go faster by building that certain research labs. By that I mean if you build more Weapon research labs, weaposn research should be faster. If you build more industrial, then industrial techs will be research faster, etc etc. The numbers in the research bar, I think is how much money you need to raise to get it to research. It's either money or research points. Only research labs give research money or research points. The reason I say it's money because you can crash on research tech if you want by clicking on the lightning bolt to the right. That costs money, and all research goes to that one tech only and non of the other research is being done in the other categories.

2) I am not so sure about the lines. I don't think they really mean much. I don't worry about it. As long as you have those blue cirlces around your empire, it's yours. It's something about trade or what not, but no conern if you don't have one. If I ma wrong, I should be corrected soon enough.

Hope this helps.

[Canute0]

Research:
The potential reseach is how much research your stations could generate.

The actual reseach is limited by your population, more population means more research points into your Research until you reach the potential research.

This is a break so you can't research that fast without population. Otherwise you just need to put some extra stations at some Black hole/Super Nova and could boost your research.


The blue lines are Traderoutes for your Private fleet, Since you can't change it and some of your freighter fleet trade with other empire anyway, you can ignore it.

[Nikolaj]

Ok, thanks guys, that really clears up a few things. It's odd, though, that the in-game help says that you should build more labs to increase your actual research. That should probably be fixed.

With regards to the trade routes, does that mean that the civilians will only trade along those lines? So if my empire is divided into two parts, that aren't linked by a trade route, neither part has access to any of the resources in the other?

Also, I've been trying to construct a research lab by a black hole, but every time I check up on the progress, the ship that was supposed to build it is gone. I assume that it's been sucked into the hole, so I probably placed the station too close. How close does it need to be, in order for it to gain the bonus?

[Canute0]

The ingame help isn't realy wrong. When you have more colonies but not much Large Star Bases you actualy could research more then you got with the Star bases only. At this point the ingame help is true.
But Mostpeople just remove Labs from the Starbases and design own better research stations and build them at systems with Research bonus, that reduce maint. cost.

Black Hole, you need to build it manual at the Black hole system, not that close to the Black hole. Maybe send an Explorer to the system first let it stop somewhere and look if that ship don't get moved into to the Hole anymore, then you got the right place to build the station.
I dont know how the AI Empire manage that


Yes your Empire got 2 parts, the State (You) and the Private.  The Private gather/transport the raw resources from your mining bases to your star bases, not sure how the payment works. And they buy/transport resources you dont produce from other empire if they are availble.
You can't control any Private ship, you just can update/modify their designs.

[exelsiar]

if you click on the black hole itself, it'll have a standard pink selection circle, if you build the station about an inch or 2 outside that then you wont be affected by the gravitation. also bare in mind that the constructor also has to pick up resources to build the station so it'll dash off to a space port first before getting on with the building.

[Jaimoe_MatrixForum]

The lab has to be outside the event horizon of the black hole(same goes for resort bases). To find the event horizon, just left click on the black hole. The black hole will be highlighted by a circle, that circle is the event horizon. You want to be outside of that circle. Alternately, I believe if you select a construction ship, then zoom out to the galactic level and right click on the black hole, you can choose the option to build research station at the black hole and it will be built outside of the event horizon automatically.

[Nikolaj]

Thanks guys, I managed to build the station. Kind of reminds me of Monty Python and the Holy Grail: "I built a research station by a black hole, but it was sucked in. So, I built another one, and that one was sucked in too. So built another and another, and the last one wasn't sucked in."

Yes your Empire got 2 parts, the State (You) and the Private.  The Private gather/transport the raw resources from your mining bases to your star bases, not sure how the payment works. And they buy/transport resources you dont produce from other empire if they are availble.
You can't control any Private ship, you just can update/modify their designs

What I meant was that one of the trade lines dissappeared, so that my empire now has two parts that aren't connected to each other by a trade line. Will the trade ships still bring luxury wares from one part to another?