Research & Development Discussion - Delta+1

If we were to go for mantlefan’s idea of getting free dice based on income rather than cash on hand, I would suggest that deciding the number of free dice a player will get on the next round should be determined at the Collect Income phase of the current turn.

To make it really simple in face to face games, you could actually get your “research dice” then and hang on to them until next round (unless your buddy steals them out of your box).  Most of us have about 100 extra dice laying around so maybe use some old ugly ones for research dice and save your nice black ones with the rounded edges for rolling battles.  In online games, you would just state the number of free dice you will get next turn and it will be posted for posterity.

At the start of the next turn, you can purchase more dice at Purchase & Repair if you want to.

Ok.  Not sure how that is preferable over getting the ‘free tech rolls’ at the beginning of your round when you R&D.  Seems like one just involves keeping track of a number until your next turn.

Mantlefan’s idea is to have it determined at the beginning of your turn, the R&D turn, in order to make players a bit more tempted to over  defend territories in the hope of holding onto those ipcs for more free tech rolls.  Not sure how its going to playout on the board.  I think we’ll still see a lot of attrition lines of 2 inf 1 ftr attacks and such.

It might give more impetus for Germany to defend France however, the beaches and not Paris.

But what if you lost territories since your last turn?

Mantlefan:

There are two sets of dice.  You get the free dice based on the cash on hand.  The first bracket starts at 10 IPC (if you earn less than 10 IPC, you cant feed your people let alone hire scientists!) and goes up by 40 IPC.  I feel that is a sufficient enough jump between increments of free dice that no one is going to be “saving up” for more dice - and if they do, it’ll be so harmful that they might lose the game because of it.

Before you roll your free dice, you determine if you want to buy more dice.  You must purchase at least 4 dice and cannot purchase more than 6 dice.  Dice are 8 IPC each, so that’s 32-48 IPC just to buy dice to roll at the same time as your free dice.  (You roll all dice together.  So if you buy 4 and get 2 free, then you have 6 dice to roll.)  The cost is so high primarily because you do get free dice.  However, the cost is low enough, I feel, that it is better to buy 4 dice now than save 40 IPC for 1 die next round.

Lastly, if you are not at war you cannot get technology - and China can never get technology.

I’m very much against the idea of free tech rolls for the rich.  (or for anyone for that matter. You want some, you pay for it)
Even a big nation has to pay to do research. Research costs a lot of money.

And the result will still be translated depending on a nation’s income.
If you’re a poor country and you have jet fighters, you can’t produce many of them.

(i must admit that i’m not a tech fan to begin with)

@mantlefan:

@Vance:

But what if you lost territories since your last turn?

Exactly. That’s one of the major benfits of having it be the income in the turn you roll. It doesn’t reward someone seeking tech for just tossing 2 inf and a ftr into a territory to kill the 1-2 inf in there.

Oh OK I get it.  I thought you were saying you wanted to speed up the game by motivating people to spend their IPCs and not save them.  But awarding dice at the end of a turn would push it too far and promote sleazy land grabs; doing it at the beginning of the turn would promote more defense and if you take a territory you mean to keep it.  Good idea.

@mantlefan:

@special:

I’m very much against the idea of free tech rolls for the rich.  (or for anyone for that matter. You want some, you pay for it)
Even a big nation has to pay to do research. Research costs a lot of money.

And the result will still be translated depending on a nation’s income.
If you’re a poor country and you have jet fighters, you can’t produce many of them.

(i must admit that i’m not a tech fan to begin with)

It’s not just being “rich.” It’s having the industrial capacity to support a research enterprise. The more industrial capacity you have overall, the more ability in general you have to research.

That’s why I like basing the cost of dice on IC’s rather than IPCs, but I would be OK with it being based on IPC’s if that is based on income score and not just cash on hand.

I understand your point about having the capacity. How about a minimal income (some kind of treshold) to get to be allowed to buy tech?

edit: if this has been said before i apologize, i confess i didn’t read every post in the topic…)

How about we compromise and say NO income does not count?

Guys, remember, under the current system you need 50 IPC to get 2 tech dice!  Australia, India and Italy are NOT going to be saving up that much, but they will qualify for one tech die even without having to save up for it.

Now, I’m willing to conceed the NO cash as it is not actual land holdings, in exchange for being able to save my 1-3 IPC and use it in my tally (which is less than 10% of what you need for a second die roll, mind you.)

@Young:

I’m saying this right now for the record…… if Delta+1 becomes a boxing ring for Cmdr Jennifer and Mantlefan… I will personally delete and dump every Delta thread I have created in this forum.

Bah, no punches have been thrown.  We need more eyes on this, everyone is invited!

@Cmdr:

Guys, remember, under the current system you need 50 IPC to get 2 tech dice!  Australia, India and Italy are NOT going to be saving up that much, but they will qualify for one tech die even without having to save up for it.

Well, India doesn’t really matter in this case since they benefit from UK’s tech.

Edit: by the way, one time we tried (in Anniversary) to allow a nation to buy tech for an Allied force (so in Global this would mean that USA (once in the war and therefor allied) can buy tech tokens for (for ex) Anzac. Or Germany buying tech for Japan. No idea if it would be interesting for Global, though.

I think you missed the option to have your free rolls determinted by Income that you hold at the beginning of your turn.

Also what about making this tech activate at the end of your round, thereby getting rid of the ‘heavy bmbs + LRA’ I WIN aspect.

I think that is option number 1 or number 2, Jimmy.

I am not completely certain, but I don’t think you can get any technology and turn it into an instant win on this massive a board.  If you can think of an example, I’m willing to hear it and rethink my position accordingly.  (LRA was “I win” for Revised if it happened immediately, I don’t think it matters as much in 1940.  But I’m not looking too hard at the Russian border, which is where it will probably occur.)

@Cmdr:

You know, if India is a seperate and soveriegn nation (as it is actually played) maybe it should not benefit from England’s tech nor should England benefit from India’s technology.  Otherwise, why are we stopping Australia from benefiting?  It’s part of the British Empire/Commonwealth.

Because Anzac has its own playing turn and color units.

Separating India in tech would bring along technical problems, suppose UK has super subs or jet fighters, or any tech that affects units, then how can you distinguish fighters that came from India or from London?

What I liked about the “free” chart was that it was prohibitively expensive to save up for more rolls.  If you can barely make the 2 roll threshhold (like Germany and pre-war America) then you are not saving another 40 IPC on top of it to get a 3rd roll next round.

I could see your purchased dice be aimed at a specific technology. (Restore the original idea of 10 IPC per die, but keep the “must by at least 4 dice, but no more than 6 dice” concept.)  Now your scientists are going for something specific, while your average citizens and college campuses might have some “random” breakthrough from your free dice.

Free Dice:  Average Citizen-Scientist, College Campus, undirected research you get free as a gift to help win the war.
Purchased Dice:  Government Sanctioned Research Programs funded by tax dollars/marks/yen aimed at specific technologies that the government feels it needs to win the war.

(SpecFor:  Good point.)

Oh, and you can still only get 1 technology a round (from Technology Development phase of your turn until your next Collect Income phase.)

Okay, I can buy everything you’re selling except #4.

#4.  In addition to any free dice you may have earned, you may purchase 4, 5 or 6 more dice at the cost of 10 IPC each.

6 is a statistical certainty of a success.  4 is the least number that gives you better than 50/50 odds, theoretically.    Also, these three numbers limit what you can invest and what you have to invest if you are to invest at all.  I want it to possible to buy extra dice because I dont like banning an act another player might want, but that does not mean I want it to be easy to do either.

@mantlefan:

@Cmdr:

6 is a statistical certainty of a success.  4 is the least number that gives you better than 50/50 odds, theoretically.    Also, these three numbers limit what you can invest and what you have to invest if you are to invest at all.  I want it to possible to buy extra dice because I dont like banning an act another player might want, but that does not mean I want it to be easy to do either.

So are you saying that if you buy 6 you get a tech automatically, and don’t need to roll?

I was going to say that and just apply the old 4:2 rule from AARe and AA50e, but I figured that was too radical for this group what with free dice and purchased dice, etc.  My other idea was to resplit the technologies, free dice would get a weaker technology, purchased dice would get the stronger version, but again, seems to complicated for this group.  Not saying the group cannot handle complicated, I am saying they dont want to handle complicated.

No, you can roll your free dice and your purchased dice together if you get a technology great, otherwise you get nothing.  However, since you do get free dice, you dont NEED purchased dice to get a technology, the trade off for that lack of need is that if you want to buy dice it’s really expensive to do so.