Research for the curious

[FriendOrFoe]

For about 3 tries over the years as I picked up and put down startopia I had been playing a research station for the purpose of finding out what happens when you complete all the research. (Either that, or so I had something to do while running a large station) Well, today I finally saw it through to the end. With a team of about 30 turraken hired solely for their dedication working across 5 labs, every available technology was improved to level 9.

What happens is that after that, Turraken no longer frequent your labs unless you put something on the scanner, such as a body or a plant. Also, once you place something on the scanner to improve it specifically after it's maxed out, it just disappears. Kind of like if you place artwork on it. As a curiosity, some things could be researched to 10 instead of 9. Also, scientists tend to improve scuzzers and goods first before other things.

I actually thought that the game wouldnt know what to do once I got there, but I was pleasantly surprised with the result. I just sort of figured research would keep happening and things would keep 'being improved' but not actually tallied past 9. So there you have it. Now I find myself without any sort of excuse to run a station over a long period of time, though :( So I downloaded some user missions, and that fit the bill. BTW, where can I find a copy of galactic zogburgers these days?

[max_ooze]

I have a copy of Zog Burgers Here (http://wideopen.biz/games/startopia/missions/index.html).

Sorry my web site hasn't been up (http://startopia.wideopen.biz) but my isp went under and I have been without internet for a few weeks.

I have 28 missions and some other goodies posted. Tell us if the site isn't working, just got it all happening today.

If you like research missions, I like the turrican university one. I liked it so much I based the first part of my mission "life the universe and everything" on it if you have a few days to spare.

[FriendOrFoe]

Yes, thank you. I was able to log in as of Oct 16, 5:15 central time.

[max_ooze]

How many game hours do you think it took to get everything to level 9 research?

When I was writing life the universe and everything I was going to make level 9 research on everything one of the goals, just never quite got around to it.

Hope my site helped you out, I have collected most of the missions and some support material but I still wanted to do add some things like skins and the "startopia fan site kit" if I ever find it.

[FriendOrFoe]

Mmmm, tough question. My sense of time and the past is garbage. I would say from 6-12 hours from stem to stern.

[max_ooze]

Thats not much, when I got Star Trek Elite Force I started at 9am and finished the game at 5am the next morning. I think I had about 45 minutes off for that pesky real life thing.

One thing I did wonder about was if you research things faster with a few small labs or one large chunky syle one?

[FriendOrFoe]

I used multiple labs, one of which was a larger lab (for aesthetics). When a lab finishes it's research, each turraken must finish his research animation and then do a dance. After that, most every turraken heads for the door, even if he will walk right back in again. That eats up a lot of time over the course of some 600 odd researches. With more than one lab up I noticed light bulbs sometimes dropping simultaniously, which means each lab was doing seperate research. I think that makes it faster. Also, the turraken must walk from apparatus to apparatus to research, which is less time in a smaller lab. My basic small lab structure goes like this:

A=analyser
1-4=research devices
D=door
O = platform to stand on while researching
X = empty space

AAAXX
AAAXD
AAOO1
X2OO3
X4OO4

and any larger lab I make tends to have the 'platform squares' arranged in a square shape. I suppose if you were curious, you could do a test. Wait to see how many researches get done in a half hour with 4 small labs vs 1 large lab with the same amount of equipment. Either that or find the average time over 10 trials to fill your message stack with light bulbs in each setup. You'd probably want 50 high-dedication turraken for the tests.

You may even want to experiment with analyser-only labs, but I think I read somewhere that you get a bonus for having at least 1 of each type of machine in a lab.