Research Collaboration?

[Arcalane]

I'm having an oddly hard time finding a straight answer to a simple question, so fuck it, here's a thread;

In short, is it worthwhile or effective to have multiple bases working on the same research project simultaneously?

e.g.

• Base A has 50 Scientists working on Laser Weapons
• Base B also has 50 Scientists working on Laser Weapons

Are they actually sharing/comparing notes, or am I better off telling one set of scientists to go work on something else?

[Meridian]

I'm having an oddly hard time finding a straight answer to a simple question, so fuck it, here's a thread;

Thumbs up.

In short, is it worthwhile or effective to have multiple bases working on the same research project simultaneously?

No.

Are they actually sharing/comparing notes, or am I better off telling one set of scientists to go work on something else?

No. Yes.

[Arcalane]

That's what I figured. I tried digging through the UFOPaedia site and a forum search but it was strangely difficult to find a straight yes/no answer and I wanted to be certain.

[Meridian]

That's what I figured. I tried digging through the UFOPaedia site and a forum search but it was strangely difficult to find a straight yes/no answer and I wanted to be certain.

Yeah, people tend to ask such questions in huge random threads, so they're impossible to find.
One question per thread ftw!

[BBHood217]

I could've sworn I've seen this question asked before...

[Meridian]

I could've sworn I've seen this question asked before...

Yes, you were the one asking 3 weeks ago: https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,7512.0.html

[Arcalane]

I could've sworn I've seen this question asked before...

Problem is my search term/pattern didn't find that thread - like I said, it was difficult to find a straight answer even though the answer is very simple, because the ways to express the question are more complex. I probably would never have found your thread because my searching focused on "research collaboration" or "research sharing". "Multiple bases research" might have found it, but I expected that to instead lead me down a rabbithole about specializing research bases and suchlike.

You essentially need to feed the question wholesale into a search engine and hope it understands. But the problem is, if you use any modern search engine, it's going to return results for Firaxis' 2012 XCOM and XCOM2, not classic XCOM or OXCE.

[7Saturn]

Well, now the only thing missing is someone adding this information to the appropriate UFOPaedia page...

[BBHood217]

The thing is, this should be kinda obvious.  After all, two bases can't research the same alien that's in only one of the bases.  And if they could, that just means they have one of the same kind of alien in each of the bases and those aliens are still treated as separate researches anyway.

[7Saturn]

Well analysis of measurement data can be done elsewhere, even if taken from one alien at one base. If you went on with your thought of how many can work on one alien, it would be even more ridiculous that 250 people are researching one alien, even if they are all working on the same base. So for the sake of game play that could be overlooked. (But would be an interesting mechanics, that there is a limit of researchers per item, depending on the type of item.) At least when thinking of the research items that don't require any particular precursor (e. g. laser weapons), then things aren't that obvious any more. So I believe the question is quite legitimate. The fact, that this detail it not really mentioned anywhere is strange, but can be rectified. ;-)