When you take research bonun ability's, this bug will occur.

I have played about 9 games now. the first 6 all had the bugs when I took research bonuses. The last 3 had no increase while taking no research bonuses.

Honestly, that isn't good. You do a lot of things right, but that's a screw-up.

I thought the bug was exploitable with creativity and anomalies. Turns the game into a bit of a cakewalk.

I have had it as Terran

gigantic, slow research, yor:
after 1/2-1 hour kinetic streams 1 cost ~4100 points.
but at gamestart 401 points.
i like the fact that weapon research takes very long but this is odd.

didnt play that much the beta...

People who played the beta and are not seeing this sudden tech cost increase, did you do a full uninstall before installing the release version?

Also, if lacking a clean install after running beta versions is the problem, is the saved game useless or can you pick up where you left off and see tech costs behave "normally?"

Played as a custom race with the research bonus and with the terran tech tree. And noticed this. I thought things were currupted.

To tell you what made me notice this the most was the fact that Federation went from about 10 turns to 29.. And my research was going up not down.

I also use the all factories approach so I should be flying through the research tree at this point in the game. Instead I had to steal Weapons techs in a war and get lucky to keep up with the bad guys. Because even the weapon teach and defenses are hugely expensive now.

Then I got the crappy Spie effects everyone super event with a massive 38 spies. And said screw this.. Game over.

That should read I am not using Research Bonus. And I did unistall the beta before I installed the new game.

I noticed this too, as the Terran Alliance though. Something that would of took 6 turns jumped to 12 after I started getting research treaties. Shouldn't that decrease time, not make it longer? I smell a bug!

After a couple more games, it looks like that the trigger of the bug doesn't depend on any particular tech.

I ve had this bug trigger after researching various techs. In fact, in a game today, I noticed the bug after costs all jump after researching a tech and so I loaded an autosave and researched another tech and did this a few times with different techs. The costs increased each an every time regardless of the tech that I researched.

One thing that I ve also noticed is that the cost increase is especially steep towards further Blue (especially research) and Red (weapons, planet invasion and defense, logistics, and life support) tech. It appears that many red techs have their prices more than triple all of the sudden.

This also seems to increase AI's costs equally as in a couple recent games most wars are fought with small to medium ships with only level 1 or 2 weapon and defense installed (I remember laser 3 cost like 29 turns with a tech capital that has a 700% bonus tile).

Just for informational purposes....

I don't think I have this bug... is it a "universal" one, or a hit and miss? I do notice some length of time for techs, but only towards late game, and turns still seem to be within normal. Ie: photonic torpedoes would take 7 to 10 turns or so... hardly the astronomical times some have posted...

After installing incorrectly, the game was all messed up. It pays to read the beta forum notes before you update... Then I went back and did it the right way...

So, Uninstalled and deleted all things ToA from box, reinstalled, and game is OK, tech wise. I installed via Stardock Central. There is an issue with all of my previously saved ships, however... The parts are there, but are reversed, at odd angles and such. So, while I can tech OK, my ships all look like they were done by Miss Churskey's 1st grade art class...

Is the install causing this stuff ??? There are alot of little weird things happening after this last update, and I am curious as to whether some of the files were corrupted or the download messed up somehow... (Please insert comment on my ignorance of programming issues here...)

Just info to help track down the problem for all of you, not trying to say "nee nee nah I can tech" or anything. Hopefully it's something minor.

T

I've been wondering that myself. Not saying people didn't follow the instructions, but maybe there's a problem with the uninstall process?

Anybody experiencing this bug who did *not* install the beta?

Yes. I've experienced it both in campaign and in the normal game mode, with various races (e.g. Yor, Humans), without any research bonuses.

I've noticed the issue as well. I was originally playing as Altarian, then a game as the Yor, and most recently Torian. The latter 2 without any research bonuses selected.

In my Torian game however I was utilizing a Research Mining Resource and I wonder if the mine's bonus may have contributed to the symptom as the Racial Bonus does. It may be when a civ's research bonus gets too high it flips the counter it is using.

i.e. Many games use an FF hex maximum for a decimal value of 255. If you increase over that 255 amount then it cycle back to 0. This is common in RPG games, like Oblivion. We may be seeing our research bonus cycle over from it's maximum value to a 0 bonus or maybe even negative.

I'll try trashing my research mine in my game when I get home to see if it makes a difference.

I did a fresh install because I did not participate in the beta. I'm encountering the bug.

Oh well, so much for that theory!

I get this crap, and I didn't play the betas.

I think through all the posts, we can be certain that this a bug that is widespread among many players and it is not related to the race, map size or bonuses with which the game is played.

In many cases, it's a game breaker because even level 1 weapons take up to 30 turns to complete under normal circumstances.

I played a huge map last night and noticed this. Since I usually play smaller maps I wasn't sure if it was a bug or not but it is darn sure discouraging. It must be scaling with map size

I haven't noticed it so far, but I usually play on smallish maps where the game ends pretty quickly. I don't think I've gone above a medium map, which means that, barring a miracle, the game's over while I'm still using medium ships armed with lasers.

Does this affect the AI too?

Probably just a math error somewhere. Someone put one too many zeros, or a misplaced hyphen

Seems to. The AI seems unable to tech up anymore after a couple of increase jumps, so if the player has the patience to overcome it the game becomes a lot easier.

Well, i haven't *Uninstalled the beta (0.98c[b])* (cuz, i simply didn't catch the forum warning BEFORE proceeding) which was barely a week old when i finally got the final release v1.90.018 and did upgrade that one also with the swift second update just a week after... and, i can say that i haven't noticed any researching off behaviors at all.
Call me lucky and unless someone at SD can explain or determine exactly what it is that could happen (reproduceable and fixed obvious symptoms), which files, what settings... i certainly won't bother with another 350MBs D/L if the actual setup ---seems--- smooth and running fine as it is!

I'm not that kind of a user who would mess around a valid install without solid evidence and proof there IS actually a flaw.

Mind you, i may eventually experience the self-growing beakers cost "bug"... and if that can occur (without me ever noticing it, probably) i expect SD to fix whatever is necessary through any further updates - automatically.

I think I've been pulling my fanboi weight lately, so I can gripe at both Stardock and some snarky forum folks about this.

If we're supposed to trust and use SDC, why the frack didn't it identify us as beta folks and give us this possibly crucial guidance? I probably "read" whatever post it was that mentioned doing a full uninstall of the beta, but come on, how can the devs expect *all* of us slobbering beta folks to catch a detail like that when we've been chomping at the bit to get a "real" game going ASAP?

Because SDC is old. Impulse should actually detect such major changes and reinstall instead of updating when necessary (key word "should" :p).

Ow! Got the suspected bug today, first time. Also first time using research bonuses since updating to the release version (it was a clean install I had zapped the Beta first). No idea whether or not ability research bonuses were a significant cause.

One thing I did notice was it happened when I had reduced the Production Slider to 60%. I'd had a rush of enthusiasm at the two game year point, and expanded too fast, dumping colonies everywhere. Cost spiraled of course, and I paid the price, having to reduce production to pay for it. I recovered by concentrating on cash generation, but noticed after getting back to 100%, the tech values were still horrible. An observation, no more than that at this stage.

I'll restart without ability tech bonuses, see what happens.

Its weird, game started fine, played well for a couple of game years on Immense, then suddenly, boom, kiss of death

Regards
Zy