I am not sure if this is a problem in the system, or if there is just something that I don't know about how it works.

I think the speed up no longer influences research speeds after players get to the AZ15. I cannot be sure about when the research stops being faster, simply because I wasn't paying attention to this dynamic. But now I can confirm that despite having a 2x speed up in Nexus, the research times are not faster. I have checked the times for research when the speed up is not active after coming out of VM, and they are identical to the research times once I have p0roduced enough to get the speed up system active.

To be clear, the fleet build and building production times are 2x faster, but not the research.

A few months ago I thought I noticed a dramatic difference in speed when I got into AZ15, but I just presumed I was imagining things.

Regarding whether I just don't know something, here is a quote from the speed up system FAQ:

Quote from Sarkasmus

Q: What is covered by that speed bonus?
A: This bonus is similar to the bonus in a speed universe. Following items will take profit of it:

• Resources production
• Buildings
• Ship buildings (fleet as well as defence)
• Researches

But I must say that the FAQ really seems to be out of date. It only talks about a maximum of 5x speed, so maybe research has been removed from the speed bonus. If so, it would be really good to announce it somewhere...

The situation now is that people have accounts with millions in fleet and buildings that they created in short time through the speed up system, but their research is terrible. This just makes it a joke that the speed up system helps to:

Quote from Sarkasmus

The speed-up system is an feature planned by SpaceInvasion which shall make it possible for smaller players to get up faster.

If the "smaller players" can get up faster but have soft fleets because of low tech etc, they are even more vulnerable than if they were growing slowly....

If this is a bug, then I want to sit in the corner and cry that I did not report it earlier - I have lost months of speed up research!!!

I have also created a ticket ingame.

Wow - I clean forgot about that! Thank you for bringing that up Shiek! I won't edit my original post, and will rather leave my embarrassing slip there for all to see so that I can continue this discussion as a suggestion fro change. But in that case, can an ADMIN move this post to "Ideas & Suggestions" please?

Now I guess I want to suggest looking at things differently.

This is the notification ingame:

"The speed-up bonus is no longer applied to research with a basic duration of over 100 days"

Firstly, the game uses slightly different language. Maybe the notification above can be changed? Here is the language for research taken from one of my research options:

Original research time: 1501 D 05:37:47

Technology bonus: 1417 D 19:59:01


Total research time: 83 D 09:38:46

So maybe "Original" should be used rather than "Basic". That is a small difference, I know, but I presumed that the phrase "The speed-up bonus is no longer applied to research with a basic duration of over 100 days" applied to any research that needed more than 100 days AFTER the technology bonus was applied - ie, I equated "Basic" to "Total". My mistake...

Having said all this, I still wonder if this decision to limit the speed up for research is not something that can be reconsidered? Again, there are many people with millions of fleet points and millions of building points, but very low research points. It is a vulnerability, a significant disadvantage.

Another comparison is to consider the Dark Gate concept. A speed up system of 15x was given to these players right through to the end of that uni, IN ORDER that they could transfer a strong account to NExus or Retro... So after 3 months of 15x speed, we have accounts transferring to Nexus with over 1,000,000 in research. (I'm not complaining!)

I basically played a few weeks of Dark Gate then went into VM, and my research points there were 3 or 4 times higher than my Nexus account. The Dark Gate account only had a lab level 13 I think... I chose to continue playing my present Nexus account so as to not have to rebuild all my fleet and infrastructure. But it is going to take me months and months (including event bonuses!) to reach my small 300k research level from my tiny Dark Gate account, and that is with a level 18 lab in Nexus...

It just seems slightly unbalanced.