07-19-2013, 09:42 PM
(07-19-2013, 03:31 PM)ixnay Wrote: They way I see it, higher tech goods just means you get more productivity out of your people. And since we are all rapidly automating, we are really talking about our Professionals. So there's not much difference between high tech mines or factories. Labs, on the other hand, use 3x the pros, so if pros are the ultimate limiting factor in EC/CW, then I suspect the long-term best investment is in labs. That's where your investment in research will pay off with the biggest improvements in pro productivity.
Having said that, there will be a time when one has to switch gears. High tech labs are great, but they don't blast aliens. And given the lead time in building up military tech, setting up factories and supply chains, and deploying stuff, you can't ignore the military side too long.
We're probably going to need a mix of tech investments. Keep researching higher tech labs with some significant effort, but once you get a decent pipeline of research coming off the line, buy up lower techs in military and ship stuff. I heard in the last game people were getting up to Energy Weapon level 60 or 70! You obviously need a massive lab base to get there, but you also need a massive production base to push out those super weapons (and a massive fuel-mining supply chain to let you fire them!)
I believe you should dump all Research into better LABS every 4 Turns. Then do Mines, Factories, Everything else on the other 3 Turns between. Do it on a 4 Turn cycle. Spare change can be used to bring up less important items.