What are your tech settings?

[fredsanford]

My defaults are spending level at 10%, and "high" priority to Fire Control, Ship Design, Torpedoes, and Guns.  Maybe Light Forces, too.  Low priority to Submarines (overall a poor investment IMO-this is a surface warfare game), and ASW.

How about you?

[ccip]

The short answer is, depends on the nation! You want to see what your situation is and what your national strengths are. Both submarines and ASW can be worth investing into depending on the nation and your enemies. In fact, under-investing into them can sometimes be a big mistake.

The two I recommend considering carefully - if you're a large nation with a big navy, Fleet Tactics is almost always worth prioritizing to high. If you're a smaller nation, Light Forces and Torpedoes are always worth prioritizing.

[gornik]

Of course, spending level is 10%
Typical research priorities for me are:

High priority:
- Guns (Sometimes I got 11-12 inches improved to +1 to the time of dreadnoughts! If another calibres improve, it's good as well, and usually they influence to my ships design)
- Fire control (Hit first-win fast! Especially in late game)
- AP shells (I want to penetrate enemy skin, not just scare it)
- sometimes temporary prioritise shipdesign, if first dreadnought techs can't be fully used (wing turrets without cross-deck fire or vice versa)
- Torpedoes for small nations, especially Japan

Low priority:
- Subs (they are useful since appear, additional effectiveness may wait for some years)
- HE shells (there are plenty of neutral countries, who are happy to sell fuses formulas , lyddite, TNT and other secrets. Anyway if shell pierces ship's armour, she will sink, faster or slower)
- Hull (there are no critical breakthroughs here, so it may wait a bit)
- Sometimes Armour or Fleet tactics (after Scouting force researched)

This combination worked well for me with all countries, from Germany to Spain.

[fredsanford]

My reasoning for the ones I pick:
I think torpedoes are always worth prioritizing, for any nation. They automatically upgrade, they're common in your fleet, and they're ship killers.

Fire Control is fire control-if you can't hit it, you're stuck. FC is the driver for rebuilds in my experience. Anytime I get Central Firing or any of the Directors (regular,improved, advanced), it's rebuild time for the fleet (situation and money allowing).

Guns go boom, so I like researching them- a new gun and a new ship design breakthrough are the main new construction triggers for me.

Ship Design has the crucial turret layout tech you need for Dreadnoughts, but once you get to 4 or 5 turrets with superimposed B/X you can back off.

Light forces is a very good pick, too. Considering that CL's are usually the busiest ships in the fleet, and DD's are the biggest threat pound-for-pound once torpedoes develop to a useful level.

[jma286]

I always prioritize ship design, guns and AP shells early while de-emphasizing subs and ASW. My goal is to mount the biggest, most advanced guns in every game. Once i get the key dreadnought techs I back off ship design and focus more on fleet tactics. Other than that I emphasize areas where I'm lagging and de-emphasize ones where I've gotten ahead of the curve.

[tmp]

Sept 17, 2015 17:20:38 GMT -6 fredsanford said:

Ship Design has the crucial turret layout tech you need for Dreadnoughts, but once you get to 4 or 5 turrets with superimposed B/X you can back off.

Turret layouts are followed with AON armour scheme and superimposed/double turrets for smaller ship classes, which are all also highly useful.

Most of the branches offer lot of useful stuff imo, it's pretty hard to pick clear must-haves. Even things like seemingly 'boring' machinery/hull/armour techs with their weight savings make a significant difference in how much stuff you can pack on the ship, and how strong it can be compared to the competition.

[hschuster44]

For me (so far German campaigns only) always fire and damage control and submarines - the rest depending on the doctrine (e.g. Tirpitz HSF vs. cruiser warfare).

[networkpesci]

Obviously I have research at 10%, research is such a small part of total costs there's no reason to have it any less. I start off with Fire Control, Ship Design, and Submarines at High, but I set Subs to Low once I get the coastal sub unlocked.

[gazomierz]

For me the top priorities are always Fire Control, Fleet Tactics and Guns (who does not want bigger guns?!). The rest depends on which country I'm running. For the poorer ones Toprs, Subs and Light Forces are good ones, I tend to stick with them. For the big players Turrets and Ship Design to build BBs asap. Machinery is high priority for me if I have options for oil. Projectiles, both AP and HE are really helpfull, so I tend to set them to high for a year or so every couple of years. When it comes to settig things on low, mostly it's Armour and Hull for me. Subs, Torps and Light Forces I sometimes set to low and generally go for the big ships in that particular game. One would like to research everything

Also a little offtop but I wanted to share my opinion on the subs. So, here we go...


OFFTOP

Submarines are really worth investing in but you have to go all the way in order for them to be effective. I rarely build any coastal submarines, the main point of large submarine fleet being commerce warfare, and they don't really help much in that regard. Also when you invent them all your others techs usually suck big time and you end up with 40 or 45 reliability. At this point they really can't do much, you loose them faster than they sink enemy trade fleet and you can only count on events they sink some unlucky warship. Not a good investment.

When you research a couple more techs they become extremly deadly and when you gain the ability to build minelaying subs the fun times begin. Once you reach 55 or 60 reliability and build long range subs they start to wreak havoc on trade routes around the globe and can win you wars with any country just by declining it's resources. But in order to do that you need many of them. And i mean many. In one of my japan campaigns i tried to have a fleet of 40 subs and 20-25 minelaying subs. The numbers varied along the way ofcourse. Sometimes i had much more of them as the replacements were finished but there were no loses to be replaced, so they just built up. Other times i had shortages, usually during wars after long periods of peace when my subs were of older tech and just got obliterated. But it's not really a problem, they are cheap and they build fast. You can build a lot of subs for the cost of one CL and they will take half the time to be completed. To the point where i stopped building CLs and had only a couple of CAs to protect my own trade routes. Subs are very cost and time effective.

Now we come to the sinking potential of the subs. When you declare unrestricted submarine warfare it is something to behold. With the fleet of ~50 subs I sunk 15-20 ships a month, rarely loosing any of them if they were up to the times in tech. And even if I lost some it wasn't an issue since 5 or 10 of them were near completion at any given time during war. Also almost every month at least 2 or 3 events about sinking enemy warships poped-up. Even if you don't declare unrestricted warfare they will still do the job, it will just take them longer. The situation changes if you're fighting more than one nation, in that case you really have to go unrestricted and be ready for some huge loses in your submarine fleet. Either way you will win most wars in less than a year due to the fact that riots and food shortages events will start to pop the turn after the war broke out. And subs can help a little bit in battlefleet engagements outcome, quite often a retreating ship will be struck by torpedo or have a close encounter with a minefield. Ships lost or damaged this way count towards the battle outcome, it's usually not that much of a difference but always something.

So subs have a lot going on for them, especially if you're playing one of the little guys. They are very cost and time effective. They are the ultimate tool for winning wars without the real fight. You can build and maintain large fleet of them without much trouble. They allow you to put much more tonnage into your BBs and BCs as you don't have the need for building commerce raiders and only have to maintain a small CA force to keep your trade routes safe. One disadvantage of them is you have to build your fleet around them, they force you to have a specific force composition. But it can work in your favor if you're one of the smaller nations. The big disadvantage of subs is that your prestige will suffer when (when, not if, that's gonna happen sooner or later) you sink some luxury boat full of women and children.

TL;DR
So to my point... The subs are great but you have to commit fully, you have to build your fleet with subs as the center point. They will be your ultimate weapon. If you haven't played sub heavy game yet, try it. It is fun and it's something different.

[Deleted]

Question: I have already got everything researched, and have been for a few game years already. Do I still keep on spending, or just set research budget to 0% to save money?

The most straightforward thought would be to set it to 0%, but I still get popup windows saying "scientists have made breakthroughs in area X" etc. I have ships built after all the techs were available, but yet after some time when I check them for rebuild, there are still more tonnage freed up than when they were originally designed, so perhaps tech is still progressing in the background but just no longer shows in the research window?

[captaincoxwaggle]

I constantly change the tech, aiming for certain things, but the ones that are always put on high are Ship Design, Hull construction, Turrets, Light Forces, Naval Guns, and Torpedoes

I usually put firecontrol on high until I get central firing, which is generally early before I return it to low and put armour on high. I also put Damage control on high until I get torpedo protection 2, which is in my opinion the best value for the weight. I try my damnest to not build a single battleship until I have at least torpedo protection 1 if I can help it. My philosophy is that because firecontrol and engines can be retrofitted, it is best to focus on designs that maximise the base hull. I put armour penetration, explosive shells, and fleet tactics on low for the same reason. I do make every attempt to purchase technology as I can to keep up though.

I find submarines to be invaluable for nations that are not the UK or US, who are capable of blockading the enemy into submission. However I put their research priority at low because they tend to be useless early game, and cheap 2-3k ton light cruisers make superior commerce raiders. By late game where high reliability medium range submarine are available, I produce them in wartime by the several dozen as surface commerce raiders become far too expensive to keep survivable and remain vulnerable to enemy battlecruisers.

[director]

Just finished a game as the CSA, and I went heavy on research into subs and torpedoes from day-1. Combined with some big, long-range armored cruisers for commerce raiding, I brought the US down in revolution.

Trying the same tactic as Italy but it isn't working as well. Maybe Austria doesn't have a lot of merchant ships (LOL).

[tortugapower]

Nov 13, 2015 23:32:30 GMT -6 skwabie said:

Question: I have already got everything researched, and have been for a few game years already. Do I still keep on spending, or just set research budget to 0% to save money?

The most straightforward thought would be to set it to 0%, but I still get popup windows saying "scientists have made breakthroughs in area X" etc. I have ships built after all the techs were available, but yet after some time when I check them for rebuild, there are still more tonnage freed up than when they were originally designed, so perhaps tech is still progressing in the background but just no longer shows in the research window?

I'm very interested in your question! Also, how did you research everything?


Considering it seems everyone chooses 10% (the max available), it might be nice to raise the maximum to 12 or 15% (with diminishing returns) so that research again becomes a real player choice instead of a given.

[Roumba]

I bet someone knows how research works in the game more than I do, but in the researchareas.dat each technology has an entry with a bunch of columns, a few of which I do not understand.


Example:
Oil firing - Name, duh.
1905        - Earliest date available?
Y        ? No idea here
80        - Percent chance for nation to have access to this tech for this game. (pretty sure)
8        ? Months of research or $millions required to complete?
126        ? Again, I have no idea.
Description

Full .dat in spreadsheet form: docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1JEprH6dLwl9uzoqZkS9Se7sLtO-Y1dvNR9LkPc51CHw/pubhtml?widget=true&headers=false
(I have too much free time)

[gornik]

Nov 17, 2015 22:05:00 GMT -6 Roumba said:

I bet someone knows how research works in the game more than I do, but in the researchareas.dat each technology has an entry with a bunch of columns, a few of which I do not understand.


Example:
Oil firing - Name, duh.
1905        - Earliest date available?
Y        ? No idea here
80        - Percent chance for nation to have access to this tech for this game. (pretty sure)
8        ? Months of research or $millions required to complete?
126        ? Again, I have no idea.
Description

Full .dat in spreadsheet form: docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1JEprH6dLwl9uzoqZkS9Se7sLtO-Y1dvNR9LkPc51CHw/pubhtml?widget=true&headers=false
(I have too much free time)

My theory about them:

Date-------- means "normal" year of researching this tech. I think, this influence probability of "dead end" event and maybe time to research.

Y\N--------- Have many ideas, but wrong, I think. Maybe:
possibility to get tech through swap tech treaty,
or (more probably) possibility to research tech before "natural" date,
or (most probably for me) is it a must to research in every game for all countries.

Number 1--- I think, it's probability of scientists choose this tech after ending current research (look at subdivision techs: they are "all-50" but I'm pretty sure my fleet usually end game with all of them available)

Number 2--- "Toughness" of tech (don't know what does this number means exactly - money, time, chance to "dead end" event, number of scientists gone mad thinking about it, or something other, but money seem most reasonable).

Number 3--- Most clear one, it's ID number of tech, used among other for national starting data (bonus tech).