Edit: What I did not know about research

[feelotraveller]

Shortly after adding a second colony to my empire by conquest I got this 'feature' which I had never seen before. (Have a look at the Total Research Capacity, Weapons column.) Doesn't look too bad in the first shot (I have only one Weapons Lab in both cases) but by the time I have added another two colonies a few years later it is starting to add up. It jumped when I conquered each colony but has incremented by the odd k at other times too. Not sure but maybe the 1.9.5.5 patch introduced some leakage with the changed lab values?

[Vardis]

I think there's a minimum you get based on your empire size and/or value. I notice it when rushing warp tech early when I build only energy labs - I'll start with 12K and that'll slowly go up until it's surpassed by actual labs.

[johanwanderer]

Wehn you first start out, without any labs in play, you do get some research from your home world, so I think Vardis is correct, there is a minimum amount of lab space that you have to reach before they take effect. Maybe 5% of potential (which is slightly above 30K in this case)? That's purely a guess.
 
What happen if you refit your only station with weapon labs on it and get rid of the weapons labs entirely? I'm currious to see if you still get 42K weapons research, or if it drops down to 12K. And what happens if you have, says, 45K worth of labs on it?

Let us know.

[feelotraveller]

Yes, thank you Vardis, that is correct. I did not realize it grew to this amount having kept more balance in my labs in all my other games.

(By the way it adds a wrinkle into research calculations since the non-lab research potential clearly gets used for purposes of allocating the proportion of research done in each field. Compare the below image to the top one, looking at the actual research done...)

[Vardis]

The 61K output is what I would expect to see if your TERP was higher than the total, since 42 * 1.45 = 60.9. If it was using the 613 / (42 + 240 + 360) ratio of .9548, the actual output would be 58.14.

But then, I can't get your other numbers to work in what I thought the equations would be. Isn't it TRC * (TERP/total TRC) * (gov bonus + race bonus + ultra-genius sci bonus + leader bonus) * (location bonus + sci bonus) * wonder bonus? So for your HT, I thought it'd be no higher than 360 * 1.55 * 1.48 = 826 max, then adjusted based on the TERP/TRC ratio. Guess I don't quite have a handle on these numbers after all...

[johanwanderer]

I think the number works out fine:
HiTech "occupied lab space" = 360 * 613 / (42 + 240 + 360) = 343.73
HiTech actual output = above * 1.25 * 1.2 * 1.1 * 1.48 = 839.40
 
I suspect it also works out for the other two numbers.

[Vardis]

So it is. I guess I was confused, since I would have sworn that the government and race bonus were added and then multiplied, so you'd see the 45% increase rather than the 1.2*1.25 = 50% increase, but clearly I was mistaken. Thanks for clarifying.

[feelotraveller]

No the government and race bonuses are definitely multiplied.

The ultra-scientist bonus (which I don't have in this game) adds to your empire research potential (or at least it always used to... haven't had one spawn yet in Universe...) and is not otherwise involved in calculations for turning research capacity into actual output.

My point about the ratios (I haven't checked the numbers and remember there are rounding differences to consider) is that it is actually 42+weaponslabtotal:42+energylabstotal:42+hitechlabstotal, where '42' is whatever your colony research contributes. Otherwise the 69k in the second pic of the first post cannot be explained.

[johanwanderer]

I think it basically mean you simply can't have zero research. It seems that if you have less than X, the game give you that for free.