Research Times

[ViciousCat069]

Sorry about this - it has been brought up before but I'm damned if I can find the answer
On the Research screen for each project there was mention of some kind of information "symbols" that told you how much time a particular project needed
I can't find it, and now I can't find the post that referred to it :-(
Can anyone throw any light on this please?
Cheers in Advance

[Meridian]

Middle-button-click on research item.

# 100
= 20
- 5
. 1

[ViciousCat069]

Brilliant - Thx!

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

I am terribly sorry for asking this stupid question. You probably did this for reason.
However, if you can print symbols, you should be able to print numbers too. Why not just print a numeric value as is???

[Meridian]

Short answer: because the author (not me) did it that way


Long answer (pure speculation):

Because the numbers are not poetic

You are not supposed to know exact numbers (and judging by the frequency of this question, we succeeded at that
We only wanted to convey a message "this is easy", "this is ok" or "this is hard"... which is hard to do by numbers because each mod uses different costs... cost 100 is easy in xcom, but hard in piratez for example.
Symbolic representation conveys this much easier and quicker:
- few symbols = easy
- many symbols or bigger symbols = hard

And some people love the added challenge of figuring out what do the symbols mean by themselves.

Bottomline, there is no particular reason for it... it's just that way and it's not even that bad.