Research & Development Centers

Cost to Operate: β 10,000 per day (per 100ft²)

Expansion: Increases Research speed

Conversion: Yes

Upgrades: Each point makes changing your Research Mix 10% cheaper.

Research & Development Centers are buildings that create Research, which is used to improve the Quality of products from Farms, Factories, and Raw Materials Sites.
Each R&D Center is assigned to a product and then within that, a patent line that you own. The patent line can be switched at any time and the product can be changed for a small construction expense (similar to other buildings).
Unlike production or sales, Research does not have to be started or collected. R&D Centers will add to the assigned patent line several times per day except when closed for construction or when funding runs out.
A patent line is separate from the R&D center that created it. The building can be changed or sold without affecting the research itself. (Although without constant additions to the research its level will decline.)
Multiple R&D Centers assigned to the same product can all work together on the same patent line, or you can have them work separate Patents instead.
Research gets successively harder to advance as a patent's level gets further above the baseline. To estimate the work required to achieve the next level, use this formula:
24 * (Current Level ² - Current Level) work hours
There is a minimum of 2 work hours per any level gain. This does not include the regular decay however, so the actual gain will be reduced by 1 level per week.

Example: Your research is Level 12.0. It will take 3170.4 work hours to reach level 13.0. If your Research & Development Center produces 2114 work hours / day, it will require 1.5 days to gain that level. However, during that time quality and research level will decay by 0.21, so the actual gain will be closer to 0.79 levels in that day and a half.

Note that the result of this formula is constantly changing as your Current Level advances through the effort. A true result would be closer to what you get from averaging the 12.0, 12.1, 12.2 ... 12.9 calculations. (And an optimal result would require calculus.) However, this estimate should be close enough for planning.

Expense Account

An operating R&D Center will accrue expenses for Utility & Taxes based on the building's size, and for Salary & Training based on the number of employees. These expenses are charged periodically throughout the day.
The expense account pays for these fees (and only for daily expenses - not for any changes made to the center).
The player must periodically add to the expense account from their company's main cash. If cash runs out the research will stop as soon as the expense account goes negative. Adding cash will immediately start it back up.
The economic adjustment has a direct effect on Taxes & Utilities and an indirect one on Salaries & Training. (See below.)

Research Mix

Each product has three different attributes that can be researched. These attributes are valued by the public in different amounts, which vary over time.
The Research Mix adjusts how your R&D Center chooses to weight each of these attributes. If the mix favors attributes that are popular, the work is more effective and the research goes up faster. The opposite is true if the mix favors unpopular qualities.
Changing the Research Mix can be done at any time, but there is a fee. (Paid from cash, not building expenses.) The fee amount is based on the size of the building and the degree of change.

Example: The product Shoes can have three types of quality: XXX, YYY, and ZZZ. A balanced mix would weight these 33.3% each.

If the public sentiment favors XXX, a change of Research Mix to 50% XXX, 25% YYY and 25% ZZZ would make the R&D Center more effective but cost a small fee. Changing to 100% XXX would be the most productive but require a larger fee.

Later changing the mix from 100% XXX to 100% YYY would be an even larger fee for the biggest possible move.

Upgrades

Adding upgrades to an R&D Center is a short-term construction project that enables cheaper adjustment of the Research Mix.
Each 1 point of Upgrades reduces the cost for adjusting the mix by 10% (additive). That means at a maximum of 10 upgrades, the Research Mix can be adjusted for free.
When an R&D Center is expanded, the upgrade level is reduced by the lesser of:

1 upgrade per 100ft²
The proportion of new expansion compared to final building size, rounded up.

Example: A 100ft² Center with 8 upgrades is expanded to 300ft². The result will be a building with 6 upgrades.

Example: A 20,000ft² Center with 8 upgrades is expanded to 30,000ft². The result will be a building with 5 upgrades.

If an R&D Center changes products, the Upgrades will be reset to 0.

Hiring

A building can handle a maximum of 1 employee per 100ft².
The first 10 employees (1000ft²) will always be instantly available after construction.
Beyond the first 10, employees need to be hired over time. A building that is operating will attract employees who will join your staff over time.
If the R&D Center is closed for any reason (expansion or the expense account runs out) then employees who are no longer getting paid will leave over time to seek employment elsewhere. (Down to a minimum of 10.)
Once your building reaches 25,000ft², you get the option to "run as" a smaller building. This enables you to save costs (if desired) by shutting down a part of the center. You save on taxes and utilities, but naturally can't hire workers for those sections either. The shut down section can be restored whenever you want, but fired workers will require time to be re-hired.

Construction Options

Unlocked at level 10

Construction options for R&D Centers can modify expansion rules to prevent employees from leaving.
Employee Maintenance allows a daily payment to unused workers that encourages them to remain loyal.
Work during construction allows research to continue during expansion instead of closing down the building. However, both the expansion and the research will proceed at half-speed (but full cost).

Employee Efficiency

As a building gets larger and needs to hire more employees, it becomes harder to find the same quality workers for the salary offered.
Employee Efficiency indicates how well your employees perform. One employee will operate at 100% but as the count goes up the efficiency will go down. This starts to become noticeable as your building reaches dozens or hundreds of employees.

Salary & Training Adjustment

Unlocked at level 5

Unlocked at level 5, Salary & Training adjustments allow control over how Diminishing Marginal Returns affects your R&D Center's labor force.
Paying more will yield better employees (by training the ones you have or replacing them with superior ones) but obviously increases the daily expense.
Alternatively the employee efficiency can be lowered by spending less than the default setting. This yields daily savings but lowers the output.
Changes in spending have a delayed effect on efficiency (although the cost change is instant). As time passes the employee efficiency will adjust to the appropriate spending based on your current spending.
The minimum daily expense is β 1000 per employee and the maximum is slightly beyond what is required to reach 100%. However, for extremely large buildings it may not be a wise strategy to insist on 100%, due to exponentially scaling costs.
The salary an employee expects is affected by the economic adjustment. In a poor economy you'll find you can get good employees at a discount, but during a boom that same salary won't go as far.