When you take research bonun ability's, this bug will occur.

I have played about 9 games now. the first 6 all had the bugs when I took research bonuses. The last 3 had no increase while taking no research bonuses.

I have had it as Terran

People who played the beta and are not seeing this sudden tech cost increase, did you do a full uninstall before installing the release version?

Also, if lacking a clean install after running beta versions is the problem, is the saved game useless or can you pick up where you left off and see tech costs behave "normally?"

That should read I am not using Research Bonus. And I did unistall the beta before I installed the new game.

After a couple more games, it looks like that the trigger of the bug doesn't depend on any particular tech.

I ve had this bug trigger after researching various techs. In fact, in a game today, I noticed the bug after costs all jump after researching a tech and so I loaded an autosave and researched another tech and did this a few times with different techs. The costs increased each an every time regardless of the tech that I researched.

One thing that I ve also noticed is that the cost increase is especially steep towards further Blue (especially research) and Red (weapons, planet invasion and defense, logistics, and life support) tech. It appears that many red techs have their prices more than triple all of the sudden.

This also seems to increase AI's costs equally as in a couple recent games most wars are fought with small to medium ships with only level 1 or 2 weapon and defense installed (I remember laser 3 cost like 29 turns with a tech capital that has a 700% bonus tile).

I've been wondering that myself. Not saying people didn't follow the instructions, but maybe there's a problem with the uninstall process?

Anybody experiencing this bug who did *not* install the beta?

I've noticed the issue as well. I was originally playing as Altarian, then a game as the Yor, and most recently Torian. The latter 2 without any research bonuses selected.

In my Torian game however I was utilizing a Research Mining Resource and I wonder if the mine's bonus may have contributed to the symptom as the Racial Bonus does. It may be when a civ's research bonus gets too high it flips the counter it is using.

i.e. Many games use an FF hex maximum for a decimal value of 255. If you increase over that 255 amount then it cycle back to 0. This is common in RPG games, like Oblivion. We may be seeing our research bonus cycle over from it's maximum value to a 0 bonus or maybe even negative.

I'll try trashing my research mine in my game when I get home to see if it makes a difference.

Oh well, so much for that theory!

I think through all the posts, we can be certain that this a bug that is widespread among many players and it is not related to the race, map size or bonuses with which the game is played.

In many cases, it's a game breaker because even level 1 weapons take up to 30 turns to complete under normal circumstances.

I haven't noticed it so far, but I usually play on smallish maps where the game ends pretty quickly. I don't think I've gone above a medium map, which means that, barring a miracle, the game's over while I'm still using medium ships armed with lasers.

Seems to. The AI seems unable to tech up anymore after a couple of increase jumps, so if the player has the patience to overcome it the game becomes a lot easier.

I think I've been pulling my fanboi weight lately, so I can gripe at both Stardock and some snarky forum folks about this.

If we're supposed to trust and use SDC, why the frack didn't it identify us as beta folks and give us this possibly crucial guidance? I probably "read" whatever post it was that mentioned doing a full uninstall of the beta, but come on, how can the devs expect *all* of us slobbering beta folks to catch a detail like that when we've been chomping at the bit to get a "real" game going ASAP?

Ow! Got the suspected bug today, first time. Also first time using research bonuses since updating to the release version (it was a clean install I had zapped the Beta first). No idea whether or not ability research bonuses were a significant cause.

One thing I did notice was it happened when I had reduced the Production Slider to 60%. I'd had a rush of enthusiasm at the two game year point, and expanded too fast, dumping colonies everywhere. Cost spiraled of course, and I paid the price, having to reduce production to pay for it. I recovered by concentrating on cash generation, but noticed after getting back to 100%, the tech values were still horrible. An observation, no more than that at this stage.

I'll restart without ability tech bonuses, see what happens.

Its weird, game started fine, played well for a couple of game years on Immense, then suddenly, boom, kiss of death

Regards
Zy