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" Tested this once with 60 man hours and 60 engineers. It took exactly 24 hours to complete.": I assume it either took 1 hour or the task was 60 man days... Otherwise the efficiency was abysmal Good to know. Edit: What about this revised lab entry? "Laboratories allow a base to conduct research. Each Laboratory will house up to 20 scientists, who require both living space and laboratory space to be available before they can be recruited. Research is networked across different bases, so multiple scientists working on the same project from different bases are just as effective as if they were housed in the same facility. However, cooperation suffers from diminishing returns, so the second scientist on a project contributes only with 99% efficiency, the third one with 98%, and so on, because the scientists need to spend time to coordinate their efforts. As the research teams grow larger, management duties encroach further onto the effective time. The management overhead is negligible with a team of 20 scientists, but is severe at 70*. Finally: As laboratories are expensive and have unusually high maintenance costs, consider your finances carefully before constructing one. *Footnote: A recent research paper has suggested the management loss to be 0.4% per scientist for a 20 scientist team and 16% for a team of 70 (on top of the ordinary diminishing returns), leading to this formula: Average Efficiency = 100 - ((Applied Scientists - 1) / 2 + X), where X is the management overhead factor, which the research failed to derive an actual formula for. "

I think i came across one of the best ideas i have ever met: 3.) This game needs a shooting range where you can test your weapons against known and unarmed enemies Here is the orginal comment: https://steamcommunity.com/app/223830/discussions/0/1729837292629920778/ The idea would be testing range where you can load dummies, armoured dummies and later advanced robots into, including basic placeable cover. You can also load your real soldiers into the battle, equipted with everything you can currently produce. For you can either make them infinitely available, or, for the micromanagement enthusiast, produceable. Every dummy will have parameters you can set, with the dummies stat being the maximum. For instance you can produce a 2k hp dummy to test equipment on, but you only want to set it to 500 hp, you would be able to do that, but not to 2.5k hp. The dummy would have some equipment slots, mainly for armour, but not necessarily limited to that. Robot dummies would have advanced stats you can set like strenght, accuracy and reflexes. As an ultimate dark dummy you could even put a "living" being into the testing evironment, for testing suppression or psionic abilties. In X-Division terms you could now use your live captured aliens for live action trailers, you can strip of the armour of live aliens to test them on dummies, with the laboratory sensor giving you more feedback about every statistical traceable data you can get your hands on: Number of bullets missed, number of bullets hit, total damage, armour degradation, current armour (approximitelly or hidden), damage split up into damage types, suppression (on living species), and and and. You would be able to throw a Xenomorph Queen against a target equipted with Praetor/Sentinel/Wolf and see how well she does against it. You could equipt robot dummies with your weapons and perform live tests on living species. Tests could be shut down at any moment, but they would be succeptible to the same rules as real ground combat. If you accidently kill your own soldier in the training chamber he is subject the same mechanics as in a normal Ground Combat mission. No experience can be gained that way though. Eqipment used in the test chamber will be subject to the same rules as in Ground Combat, eg. if your throw an incendiary grenade you have 1 less in your base. Explosives could be tested this way, rockets can be tested this way. You could even use remnants of androns for testing purposes to discover new battlefield tactics and such. The whole testing chamber could be your own formable Ground Combat testing field, a mini Ground Combat mission so to speak. Research would be tightly tied into the testing chamber, with research unlocking new and better abilities to test equipment on. Better technology could slowly introduce mechanics to the player if they discover it during the training. This idea can be heavily expanded on and seems highly integrateable. (Clears throat) If the target goal for X2 is 20 to 25 mission per game than this feature seems to be big to be worth the realisation, eg. if youfinish the game in 20 to 25 mission ground combat needs to be more or less self explanatory. But a testing range would be perfect if you want to have a more sandbox like game and dont want to compromise on complexity. This and a well made tutorial would open up the game to new people, while advancing what the XCOM genre is standing for in a meaningful way. Not only for X2, but i also think Pheonix Point and other XCOM games could profit from such an idea. @Chris@Dagar@Svinedrengen@Phoenix1x+52

Thats actually something that we did in X-Division, or rather @PALU. Every alien captured alive gives a small report about their relative armour strenghts and weaknesses. On the subject of giving out concrete armour/hp/other values i strongly have to disagree. 1600 of pure testing hours on X-Division have revealed that you should make the foe as mysterious as possible. What is important in a video game is to capture feelings and emotions, not to make it a numbers game, at least not on the surface. This idea is not about solving a problem. This idea is about expanding the gameplay experience of the player to encourage experimentation and different approaches towards the game and life. Apart from the fact that its cool as hell to make the comparatively hard capture of a queen and then let it run amok in your testing range. Its about gradual teaching of gameplay mechanics, and a safe environment to test them. It touches upon the subject which most more complex games have been lacking: a tutorial and playful discovery and explanations of mechanics and tactics. Writing numbers into the Xpedia doesnt encourage players to experiment, rather the opposite. It encourages them to find the "correct" solution with numbers. But thats just my oppinion . Cheers @drages