Science meta-progression

[Cupax3]

Concept

R&D is a department that has steep per-round investment to get going and little benefit as, by the time you're done, the round is likely close to over. To address this and make the time spent pursuing knowledge more impactful, a level of progression shall carry over between rounds.

Progression

• Each "area" of science (botany, biology, chemistry, materials etc.) will be given a score or level - this level will carry over between rounds.
• At the start of a round, the current level is loaded and respective recipes are pre-unlocked, meaning scavenging for rare resources the ship does not have on hand becomes more valuable to be able to actually manufacture advanced goods.
• At the end of a round, the new level is saved...
  • If the crew has worked to preserve the current level, it remains the same
  • If the crew has worked to improve the current level, it rises[1]
  • If the crew has not worked on either preserving or improving, it decays according to a tbd formula
• The level hard-resets at set real-time intervals[2]

Goals

• Strictly being additive (no malus should be applied for "neglecting" science, i.e. becoming worse than tech 0)
• Incentivize higher-level science play over multiple rounds (basic experiments one round, increasingly elaborate ones later)
• Incentivize cooperation and greater reliance on off-ship roles by giving them tangible and meaningful tech to immediately work towards

Additional Notes

• [1] Ideally all areas are improved at roughly equal pace; If one area is rushed to max level ahead of the others, decay rate and cost should make it more difficult to achieve
• [2] This could be two days, five days, one week; Playtesting will be necessary to adjust to a comfortable level. In-lore explanation could, for example, be that the Powers That Be:tm: have the ship move to a new sector of space where the experiments must be performed again to make sure the outcome is still the same, or something like that.