I realized the research stat probably helps accumulate more valuable research points. At first I was ignoring it because it did not seem to make much impact on researching new tech (it happens so rarely any time savings is minimal. You probably only research 2% of gametime).
Now I am wondering what speed does.
Speculation: It’s an overall efficiency gauge. If we take 300 to be a baseline, someone with 150 would generate points at half the rate.
Speed is quite simple really… it affects the number of times your staff pause to scratch their heads. The higher their speed rating, the less often they pause.
Research affects the number of research points (dark blue) generated during non-research tasks. Higher values means an increased likelihood of generating research points.
Does speed truly only prevent headscratches? It seems like it should increase the frequency of tech and design bubbles, or shorten game development cycles. Those are the things I would expect fast coders to be able to do.
I did just set myself a baseline. I ran through the game with my devhouse being ‘Speedcode Incorporated’ and ran my entire staff to the 700-900 range with speed training. I can’t tell yet what impact it had - though I know that it actually took me longer to get to the top-end stuff, and the score was lower than my first run through the game. I’m pretty sure the extreme speed at least resulted in superb bugfixing. My games would have three hundred bugs by the time they were done, but bugs would roll off the counter like money from a profligate’s bank account. In two weeks, we’d be bug-free, and then I’d accidentally ship with a bug that was introduced at the last second. (Curses!)
Headscratches don’t really impact game development (after they finish a headscratch, you’ll notice a BIG set of bubbles…that is the bubbles they would have normally generated during the scratch). I am unsure if speed impacts the frequency of them.
Speed impacts the rate of tech and design bubbles. A low speed person might generate only a few bubbles during a development phase, while a high speed person will generate more.
A person’s tech/design skill will impact the size of bubbles that do get generated.
This has a multiplicative effect when combined with speed.
If you have high speed and low skill, you’ll generate a lot of small bubbles (5X3=15)
If you have a low speed and high skill, you’ll generate very few larger bubbles (3X5=15)
But if you have medium skill and medium speed, you’ll end up generating more total bubbles (4X4=16)
Keep in mind that every bubble has a % chance of turning into a bug, modified by the person’s experience level. High speed employees tend to make more bugs, especially if they are inexperienced.
When training your employees, don’t neglect speed. You’ll often find an employee makes far more bubbles after a single speed training than they do training design/tech, especially if their current speed is lower than their design/tech levels.
The problem with training speed is that it doesn’t help an employee reach any requirements for specialization training, since none of them care what their speed is.
Also pay attention to speed when hiring employees. You might think you’re building a balanced team by hiring one Tech focused employee and one design focused employee…but if the tech guy has a 295 speed and the design employee has a 135… you’re going to find your games flooded with tech bubbles. Great if you want action games, not so great if you were hoping to do RPGs.
Research is a far simpler value. The higher it is, the more research bubbles the employee generates when developing a game, a new engine or doing contract work. The only thing that modifies research points gained besides this skill is that doing new combo games nets you double the research point gain, all else being equal.
imo, speed affects only bugfixing. i had two employees, one with (design/speed) 600/100 and one with 600/400. if speed would be a multiplier, the second employee should have done four times more designpoints, but he didnt. they both made the same amount of designpoints.
it would also makes sense for an other reason. if you look at the top of your screen, you can see 4 circles. and each programmer has 4 skills. so that would match perfectly.
Try having two employees of the same level. One super-focused in tech, one super-focused in design. Have one of them have a much higher speed. You’ll quickly find your bubble ratio skew heavily in favor of the high-speed employee’s skill type.
i did that test already as you can read. they both produced the same amount. im pretty sure im right. unless a greenheart-developer says something against it.
You very well may be right. I’m just speaking from my own observation bias. I haven’t done any controlled studies on the matter.