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Sorry Dante, there are plenty more confusing and poorly (if at all) document aspects of this game. Many will make this one seem like it was obvious

Note: I'm loving the game. So there's that. [:'(]

Hi DW community. First post for me but I've been playing DW since the release. Definitely my fav game of all time, with Imperium Galactica I and II coming up second and third respectively.

To the point...

So, the Distant Worlds Wiki (distant-worlds,wikispot,org/Research_and_Technology) does a pretty good job of explaining the research maths, although in a convoluted manner. The thing it fails to mention is how many labs you need to reach the max lab capacity without exceeding it to much and therefor waste un-necessary maintenance.

I myself only ran the numbers today to get this clear in my head, as I usually just make excessive labs to ensure that I was at maximum research capability. After creating an excel sheet today using the math from the wiki, I found the following...

Simply total the three numbers listed next to 'Total Research Capacity' and the sum should equal or exceed (by a small amount so as to minimise waste) your 'Total Empire Research Potential' as displayed in the research screen.

EG: If you had a TERP of 723 and had 250 TRC in each category, you would only be wasting a mere 27k of lab space.

If however you had the same amount of research labs shown in the above linked wiki page, you are not fully utilising your available scientists. In that example, the player has 583k of scientists and only 360k of lab space, so there are 233k scientists sitting around doing nothing.

Hope that clears up any unanswered questions.

EDIT: Typos

PS: I can't post links yet so replace the commas with full stops. It also appears that I didn't read all of the post in this thread because Bingeling has already explained this point. Owell.

OK... this is a topic I am also a little confused on, and came to this thread to clarify. Now I'm WAY more confused. But let me walk through how I think it works, and maybe someone can correct where I'm wrong, because in my view the answer to the OP's question is EXTREMELY simple.

Total research potential is based on population, or GDP, or whatever. But who cares what it's based on, the game tells you the number, that's all you care about.

So for example, lets say I open the research screen, and my Total Research Potential (top right corner number) is 360K.
Now lets say I build labs to get 120K of each branch of research, now my Actual Research Output will be 120K for each branch, exactly matching my research capacity.
I am now perfectly using my research potential. Hooray!

But, of course, there are other bonuses and such. Oh No! Complication?!?! Or is it?

I posit that no, there is no additional complication here for the player to consider. If I'm a human republic, I have various research bonuses. If I have a super genius scientist, I get more.

So lets say I have a 50% bonus to all fields from various bonuses and scientists. And lets say I have 600K total research potential.

So now, I should build enough research labs to get 200K of each type of research, bringing my Total Research Capacity to 200K per branch. My Capacity will once again exactly match my Potential. But, my Actual Output will be different!

My Actual Output will not be 200K per branch, because I have all those bonuses that add up to 50% each! So instead, my actual will be 300K per branch!
So what do I do? Simple, I do nothing, because I get that bonus for free!

However! There is another consideration which only matters when your Capacity exceeds your Potential, and is not the same across all 3 fields. Then, your actual output will depend on the proportion of potential research for that particular field, meaning if my capacity were 100k with no bonuses, and I had 100k weapons research capacity, and 50k energy and 50k high tech, I would end up getting 66k actual weapons research output, 33k energy, and 33k high tech.

Interesting note: When I took NephilimNexus's screen shot, and tried to make sense of the weapons research number, I was able to get the right answer, but only by ignoring the 20% empire research output bonus from the supergenius scientist and the 1900% from pirate bases. I have to assume those add to the TERP, although that's not clear from their descriptions. However the 15% human bonus did directly go into the output. So my math was (18000 * 1.15(human bonus) * 1.1 (Leader weapon research bonus) * 1.32 (Ultimax Research Center Scientist Bonus) = 30056.4, exactly the correct answer!

Super Geniuses do NOT add their 20% to research output, but instead seem to add it to TERP. Pirate base bonuses seem to work the same way. All other bonuses seem to be applied to the ARO.

Also, I know it's like... 2 years later, but Whiskiz wasn't entirely in the wrong here... Aeson jumped all over him for a "poorly formed question" that was perfectly formed and correct, and in the process completely confused everyone who read the thread from that point on. While Whisiz was probably a lot more hostile than warranted afterward, it's understandable to a point, considering how condescending Aeson was about a mistake that was actually not made... In case you ever read this Whiskiz, I understand your initial frustration...

TLDR:
You should build enough labs so your Total Research Capacity matches or slightly exceeds your Total Research Potential. Actual Research Output is not something you should adjust your capacity around, it's just a final number after bonuses.