Research
- Research is the primary way of improving your product.
- It is organized into Patent Lines, which are collections of advancements you have discovered. You can own one or more patent for the same product, but each building can only make use of one. (Different inventions are incompatable.)
- Research indicates your advancement over society's baseline. Over time, the the general knowledge advances which means your Patent becomes less advanced. This results in a lowering of your research level until it eventually reaches 0 and the patent expires.
- You can view a list of all your Research in the Research Department, under the Departments menu.
Creating
- Research is created at special buildings called Research and Development Centers. You can read more about these in the R&D Section.
- Use the License button in any R&D Center to either create a patent or choose one you have already created.
- The higher research goes, the more work it takes to advance. Because society advances at the rate of 1 level per week, eventually you will reach a point where your R&D center can't work fast enough to keep advancing. When this happens, either expand, add another R&D Center to the project, or Publish the research and start a new patent.
Publishing
- Research must be published before it can be used.
- A patent can be published under three different license rules:
- Private - Only your company can use this patent.
- Trade Group - Members of your Trade Group can use this patent.
- Open License - Any company can use this patent.
- When publishing you will set a license fee. This is charged per-unit for any Factory, Farm, or R&D Center making use of it.
- The fee you set is measured against the level of research (by use of a suggested fee and a multiplier). This means it will naturally come down as the research decays.
- Published research can be adjusted between quality and speed. Each level of speed increases production rates by 0.64%.
- Moving the quality/speed slider also affects the license fee. A faster speed will bring down the per-unit cost so that the total fee per day remains the same. (This way companies don't have to pay more for using speed.)
- Once published, these settings can be changed. However, if another company starts licensing your Patent you can not kick them off and you can not raise the price.
Using
- To use Research at your Factory, Farm, or R&D Center click the License button to view a list of published patents.
- Licenses require a per-unit fee as shown.
- Fees are collected when production starts along with all other costs. If the production is cancelled they will be returned. Otherwise they are paid to the patent owner when the finished product is collected.
- When using your own patent you end up paying yourself. Because the expense goes into Cost of Goods Sold and the revenue into Licenses, it doesn't really change your overall income. However, it does help view how well each of your departments is doing.
- The more your patent is used, the faster society catches on to your advancements. This means a published patent will decay a little faster than the base 1 point per week, depending on how much it is used.
- The rate varies with population (all cities combined) and by product. You can view an estimate in your Research Department.
- Much like how fees are adjusted for speed settings, so is the decay rate.
Example:You have a Cars patent of level 80. The current population is such that you get a point decline for every 50,000 cars produced.
If you set it to 100% Quality then for every 50,000 cars produced with your patent your research will decay 1 level. (In addition to the 1 point per week.)
If you set it to 100% Speed (resulting in 51.2% increase in manufacturing) then for every 75,600 cars produced your research will decay 1 level.
- If you are licensing someone else's research, they can't kick you off or raise your price. However, they can adjust the quality/speed setting. This may or may not be to your advantage, so be sure to talk with the patent owner if you are concerned about their intentions.
- The fee you pay will naturally decline as the research level does. However, when it gets low enough you may not want to use that patent anymore, so check every so often to see if you want to change. Eventually the research level will reach 0. When it does the patent will expire and if your building was using it you'll be switched to "No research".