nukesnipe wrote:I get overwhelmed by the number of research projects you can have in the works at Turn ~100. I remember in one game, I was actually researching EVERYTHING that was open for me to research. There was no real R&D strategy involved. No "hard" decisions to be made.
In Solar Starfire? How many RDS and SA did you have?? Granted, R&D is less about managing money and more about managing your navigation through knots and branches; unless you really have more RDS and SA than you need, you should have feast periods after making a new EL where you have too much research and famine periods when you are near the end of your EL when you don't have to be as choosy.
That said, since the underlying rules are based on Ultra Starfire, I think that research is too fast. All research, but especially EL research.
I like having major complexes that have to protect, so having a huge research facility on a planet could make a good strategic target. Ditto for shipyards. Perhaps I didn't realize that I don't like the planetary limit on facilities.
If the limit was removed, folks would be free to either create massive R&D centers, or smaller, distributed enclaves. Perhaps that is worth a thought?
The issue I have is that this allows a player to completely fortify his important facilities in system where they are completely safe from anything short of a galaxy-wide war. If you are willing to pay for it, you can still double and triple facility use in a heavily populated system and have dozens of facilities there. But it has a cost compared to lazily spreading out facilities to the corners of your empire. Possibly exposing them to a hostile invader. And even so, we allow for a fair anount of flexibility in how and where you can place those facilities in a system.
And that's meaningful choice you have to make. And we think half of the fun in a strategy game is finding solutions to those choices.