Research
From IceWars Documentation
To start researching you need:
- a small iron mine
- a small steel mill (requires the small iron mine)
- a small research lab (requires the steel mill)
- Energy
To start your research, click on research in the menu and select the next thing your scientists should discover. Contrary to most other browsergames, in icewars there are no gradate researches, but there is rather a large techtree similar to Civilization. There is no official publication of the whole icewars techtree, instead you can just see the next possible research, and in the description you can see what future researches they will enable. You can also see what buildings, defense structures and genetics options are enabled by the research. Every ship has its own research, these ones are somewhat special in that they cost 1.5 the resources one ship would cost, and you will get a prototype of the ship as soon as you are done researching it.
You can abort a research by selecting the selectbox next to the abort-button at the top of the page and then click onto abort. However, since you waste all the RP you already put into the current research you should think twice about this! You also should take care that there is as little time as possible between the end of one research and you starting the next research, because any RP produced while not researching anything will be wasted by your scientists in the pub.
Usermade techtrees of varieing quality might be found in the forums, however yet there are no english techtrees known to me, so you will probably have to research without knowing the full tree, or ask someone who already played the German version about future researches. What can be told is that in the German Alpha 0.1337, the evos 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 7 were implemented with roughly 50 researches per evo (evo 0 being shorter, evo 7 longer). It will take at least about half a year to reach the end of the techtree, for most players it will take longer.
Most of the features of Icewars, like trading, building ships, colonization and pretty much everything else is activated by some research, also you will better mines and research labs with certain researches, that's why it is pretty important to do some research. Also, for each 100 research points a research costs, you will be awarded with 1 highscore point.
Important Note: some Buildings, like the University, are needed for certain researches. you can see which researches are enabled in the buildings description, you can also see in the research description if there are any buildings needed to start it.
The more people are done with a research, the cheaper it gets. The following steps are known from the classic, German version of the game, it is not yet clear if it will be the same in the international version:
researched by...
- 50 people -> 5% less RP
- 250 people -> 15% less RP
- 500 people -> 30% less RP
- 1000 people -> 50% less RP
- 2000 people -> 70% less RP
- 3000 people -> 80% less RP
- 4000 people -> 90% less RP
This is primarily done to make it easier for newbies who start later during the round. It's also a measure to slighten the advantages of the Digger/Fleeter Alliance a bit, who are usually advancing faster in the techtree than single players.
