Surveillance Cameras and white lab coats everywhere. This is a high tech facility where top secret research is going on. You won't get far here without a finger print scan.
| Building Cost | Default Permission | Public in these Cities |
|---|---|---|
| US$ 70 000 000 | Public | ?? |
| Employee | Req'd? | Cumulative | Weight | Skill | Talent |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cleaner | Yes | NONE | 1 | - | |
| CEO | Yes | NONE | 1 | Basic Economics (optional) | Intelligence (mediocre) |
| Security Guard | No | Declining | 0 | - | |
| Scientist | Yes | Declining | 5 | Advanced Science (*) | |
| Lab assistant | YEs | Declining | 3 | Basic Science (***) |
Research Centers, a new type of locale was recently added to the game, although exceptionally expensive, so no such building has been built yet. So, how do they work? Read More»
First, let us state that Research Centers (RC) are so expensive that probably only the biggest cities, or several cities cooperating, or possibly one or a few huge corporate companies, will ever be able to build them. They are also very costly to maintain, in terms of staff and resources needed.
An RC is a powerful site that can do several things:
* New technology can be developed, that benefit the entire game world. For instance, more advanced versions of machinery can be developed which improve the production rate of all such machines (for instance CD production units).
* Discoveries can be made that opens up otherwise locked features of the game, for instance, vaccines for diseases can be developed (for more details about this, see earlier Community News).
* Certain skills that are not publically available as books can be “discovered” here. (Skill discovery through RC not yet implemented though).
* Other research projects can be undertaken, that have a more specific and/or one-time effect.
Normally, the entire world benefits from the discoveries. However, not always, as this depends on the type of project: Vaccines, Machinery improvements and such all have a global effect. However, when new skills are researched, only the scientists working at the RC will learn them. Obviously, they may (or may not, depending on who has funded the RC) feel committed spreading the skills to the rest of the world through teaching.
Cities could get together to build a research center and focus on common-good type of projects. Or private companies or groups of private people could pour their wealth into an RC for more egoistic projects.
An RC develops one project (or “mission”) at a time. Some missions take longer than others to complete and it very very strongly depends on what scientists it has hired, but typically expect a medium range project to take say a full Popomundo year to complete, for a well staffed RC.
So, how much of this is implemented today: RCs are now operational. A number of missions exists for the Engineering and Medicine catagories. In the future we will add more missions to these categories, as well as adding entirely new categories.
More details on the inner functioning of a Research Center. Read More»
An RC always work on one project at the time. They can change this underway, but this is not recommended because all work on that project is then lost and if they want to start again, they have to start all over.
The Manager of the RC first choose which general research category the centre should focus on. Currently, there are three categories implemented, (with a few more to come in the future): Engineering, Medicine or Comedy. It depends on what category you have chosen, what Research Missions are available.
So, after choosing the category, the Manager choose what mission, and within that mission, chooses some parameters more specifically (for instance, if the mission is to develop a vaccine, exactly which if the available disease strains to developo the vaccine for).
Also, the category decides what skill requirements should be asked of the hired scientists. Two skills are fundamental: Basic Science and Advanced Science. However, these are merely the foundation. A scientiest should have at least one or a few other relavant skills in order to be really useful to the RC. For an RC focusing on Engineering, the Basic and Advanced Engineering skills are the ones to look for. For a Medicine RC, skills of Medicine as well as Pharmacology are useful.
So, to clarify: Employees first need one or two of the Basic/Advanced Science skills. This allows them to get hired (and it helps a little to the research). Secondly, they should have as much as possible of the relevant Engineering or Medicine or Comedy skills. The more such skills are accumulated at the RC, the faster the RC will complete their projects. NOTE: For RC, the quality of the locale is not crucial to the success speed of the projects. A “perfect” RC may actually be slow at developing, if, for instance, it has a lot of Engineers hired as scientists while undertaking a Medicine mission.
Each day work is completed, and a percentage bar is shown for how much work towards completion has been made. When the work is complete, something cool happens depending on the mission. Then the RC is set to idle again and the manager need to start a new project.
Research Centers are often community projects, that also got their own threads in the forum.