Few days ago I've built my first RC. It was researching chemicals ever since. The research times are getting quite long (80h with q6 now) and I was wondering when is the best time to expand my RC to make it research things faster. Expansions are expensive and take time.
I'm also not sure if I should expand it by 10 m^2 or more to make research faster.
Best moment to expand RC
Moderator: moderators
I'm afraid I don't have a good absolute answer for you.
I like to perpetually expand so that each next research finishes in under 4 days (96 hours). Give or take an expansion to fix timing (no sense having research finish at 2 am when I'm asleep). You can expand more and keep the time faster, whatever works for you, but don't neglect expanding your actual money-making businesses.
Note of course that as the building becomes larger, it will take larger and larger expansions just to keep that time relatively constant.
I like to perpetually expand so that each next research finishes in under 4 days (96 hours). Give or take an expansion to fix timing (no sense having research finish at 2 am when I'm asleep). You can expand more and keep the time faster, whatever works for you, but don't neglect expanding your actual money-making businesses.
Note of course that as the building becomes larger, it will take larger and larger expansions just to keep that time relatively constant.
I've built a little calculation of how much I gain by expanding before starting a new research. You just need to figure out what the total man-hours for a particular research is, and the divide that by the number of employees that you are thinking of expanding to. If you save more in research time than it takes to do the expansion, the expansion makes sense.
For example:
10 employees
x 100 hours to research next Q
= 1000 total man hours
If expanding 10m (1 more employee) - 2.5 hours
11 employees
1000 total man hours (this doesn't change)
1000/11 = 90.9 hours to next Q
So, you can spend 2.5 hours to shave 9.1 hours off your next research, a net gain of 6.6 hours vs. not expanding.
For example:
10 employees
x 100 hours to research next Q
= 1000 total man hours
If expanding 10m (1 more employee) - 2.5 hours
11 employees
1000 total man hours (this doesn't change)
1000/11 = 90.9 hours to next Q
So, you can spend 2.5 hours to shave 9.1 hours off your next research, a net gain of 6.6 hours vs. not expanding.