New Patents

Cost Effective Materials: Reduces building cost

Efficient Workspaces: Advanced buildings complete projects faster

High energy condensers: Increases condenser output (maybe at a power cost?)

Numbers could be tweaked for balance. May have a few other ideas, these were just off the top of my head.

Book scrubbing: No longer gain 10% interest on debt per day

Inside man: Gain 1 free claim per day

Advanced longetivity: Once this is researched the colony no longer stops growing, no matter the cost of life support. The owner also recieves 2 free stocks in his own company if aailable.

Efficient investment: Reduced raw resource input for adjacent buildings.

Drone surveyors: More information about the current market (tells you how much of each resource on the map is produced that isn't yours)

Structural alloys: Can now build on hills and other unbuildable terrain

Complete recycling: HQ no longer requires water or food (electronics for robotic)

Improved Communications: Advanced buildings gain adjacency bonuses

Wind smelters: Steel mills and glass factories gain improved production on windy tiles.

Solar refractors: Reactors and electronics gain increased production on sunny tiles.

Just a few ideas, I like some more than others, but zultars post looked so lonely

I like the idea that patents are chosen from a pool for every game.

Silicon Dreams / The Sandpit = Silicon scrubbing.

Heidelberg - +33% blimp speed or  - 33% fuel cost

Hydrospheres - Water pumps generate 0.3 power

High Frq Trading - ability to short sell resources during Hacker Events or take a 1% "commission" on rival hacker trades

Moonshot - -33% to offworld launch times

Moisture Traps - power tiles give .5 water

Radar Jamming - rival blimps cannot pass over your airspace  (have fun coding that one!)

AAA - 50% chance to sink rival blimps - like a timed pirates but destroying rather than stealing

I also like the idea of a random selection of patents, though there would need to be a way to see which ones were active for a given map. If there was a tab during the scouting phase that would allow people to see what patents were available if they could pry themselves away from scouting for a moment that would probably do the trick. It might end up making things a bit random or raise the barrier of entry for the game somewhat, especially if Black Market effects are ever drawn from a randomized deck as well. If I had to choose between them I'd prefer a static selection of patents and a random Back Market.

Mohorovicic Boring - Mines and Quarries also produce a small amount of power.

Smart Grids - Wind Turbines, Solar Panels and Geothermal Generators shield themselves and adjacent buildings from EMP and Power Surge.

Quantum Computing - Find out about shortages and surpluses early (or even earlier in the case of Scavenger colonies, if they keep that ability).

Arcology - HQ consumes a small amount of Chemicals instead of its normal life support.

Thanks for involving us Soren! Patents are actually one of my favourite parts of the game because of their ability to change some of the most basic rules on a fundamental level. Having the science leader in the campaign start with a patent lab really sells the flavour of the research angle.

Claim relocation - Allows you to disclaim tiles, and thereby increasing your claims count. Useful for when a resource has been nuked into oblivion, or when you want to reorganize your layout to increase adjacency bonuses.

Deep mining drilling - Gives you access to a building that increase the resource level. Building must be built at a resource tile, then it must work for a given time, when finished the building is removed (possibly this also takes time). After this you have a empty tile with an increased resource amount.

Static charge shield - Dust storms have less of an impact on production.

Magma tunneling/flow control - Increase output from geothermal power plant.

Food flavouring - Increases (the patent holder) sell price of food, but does not increase to purchase price of food for him.

Patent transferance - Allow the patent holder to use the patents of purchased companies.

I can't think of any good names for these, sorry:

Something something production - can use different terrain as a low source of a related resource (i.e., pulling Iron from Volcanic, Aluminium from Rocky, Silicon from Sand, Water from Riverbed/Lakebed, Carbon from Crater, probably confusing and OP for Scientific and in general).

Something something adjacency - mines, quarries and water pumps now share adjacency bonuses between themselves. Maybe even allow it for tier 2/3 buildings and/or different kinds of Power sources.

Something something Sun - allow the solar panels/condensers work during the night (with reduced efficiency?)

Something aluminium instead of steel - use aluminium instead of steel for building/upgrading.

The Omnipatent - copy the effects of a single patent already acquired by another company.

Also, I'd like to see some way to interact with the offworld prices, not sure it should be done through a Patent Lab, but maybe something like increasing offworld prices for electronics/chems (for just one player?) or allowing to ship power offworld.

Advanced R&D (very high chemical cost/low duration): Special buildings (ebay/hacker/patent only?) complete actions immediately, however a cooldown period of 1.5+x duration, and -1/sec power cost is imposed afterwards which cannot be avoided.

- The idea is that sometimes you know a patent is being researched by another player, or you need an immediate boost, but there is nothing at all you can do to obtain it (due to goon squads), so you can incur a heavy cost to effectively buy the crucial patent, by researching this patent, then the 2nd patent.

Hydroponics: Food farms only consume water at a higher rate, and don't require power.

Electromagentic Launching System: Offworld shipments are launched using power only.

So many good ideas guys, I love it!

@indczn1: I like the electromagnetic launching, how about calling it the Space Elevator? 

@duelKing: I like the idea of Book  Scrubbing, but I think 0% interest is too OP, I would think it should be half the interest or something.

Some other ideas:

The Godfather:  BM items are half the current price (because you are you)

SpaceY: special buildings are cheaper to build (because you have a wealthy geek backing you)

Food Preservation: reduces the food consumption at the cost of some aluminium (because canned food is in vogue again)

Purity: lowers the O2 consumption at the cost of a lower Pleasure Dome yield (those poor Martian settlers... )

+1 on Kingmorgan's idea for a pool of patents that are drawn from at the start of each game.

@oddity I don't think 0% interest is too powerful at all for a patent.

Heres a couple ideas from me:

Spherical Construction: All buildings have +25% production (due to having more space to produce in)

Counter Intelligence: When a BM is used against you (or when you trigger a goon squad) the next purchase of that specific black market item becomes 50 or 75% cheaper for you the next time it's up for purchase.

Compound Interest: Earn 1% interest on your money supply every 4 hours.

Think I heard about the pool of patents idea from Soren, can't take credit for it sadly.

Cubit32,

+1

However 25% might be a bit OP, since this would be equivalent to the first level (improved) for all resources in the Engineering Lab: 260 (13 x 20) chemicals plus 780 (13 x 60) seconds versus (assuming the most expensive patent) 100 chemicals plus 160 seconds.

Therefor for balance sake 10% would be more reasonable (balance equilibrium at +10% production for 100 [calculated value 104] chemicals plus 300 [calculated value 312] seconds).

Not really patents, but related to it:

Dead patent revival - All patents held by all bought-out companies are returned to the open market, and can be researched (possibly against reduced costs) again by anyone. Possibly this 'Patent' can be researched multiple times.

Patent Trolling - Dead patents held by companies owned by the (Patent Trolling) patent holder can not be revived. Possibly multiple companies can research this.

Patent Dispute - Try to steal a patent held by another company. No 100% success-rate.

Let the patent wars start.

ok maybe 25% for all is too much. What about:

Incentivized Harvesting: Primary industries receive adjacency bonuses from secondary ones. Like the robotic trait but reversed

As there seems to be a good mix of ridiculous suggestions and sensible ones here, I figured I'd join in (but I've kindly broken apart my silly suggestions from my serious ones).

PPP = Patent Price Point. They're relative numbers between 1 and 10, where 1 would be the cheapest of the suggested patents and 10 would be the most expensive.

Serious Suggestions:

PPP: 4 - Backup Generators - Condensers work throughout the night.
PPP: 1 - Faraday Cages - Reduces maximum bounce of Power Surge used against your structures by 4.
PPP: 1 - We Can Rebuild - Improves speed of repair bot + repair after dynamite by 200%.
PPP: 10 - Do You Have A Flag? - Opponent's buildings cannot be placed next to any of your structures. You may place structures next to opponent's still.
PPP: 9 - Gone Goon Gone - Any BM effect triggered by you that reveals a Goon Squad will trigger the Goon Squad, rather than simply revealing it.
PPP: 4 - 1337 h4x0r - Your Hacker Arrays now have the ability to create fake shortages/surpluses, giving the warning to those that can see it, but not triggering a real shortage/surplus. Takes 1/5 the time/cost of a normal hack.

Semi-serious:

PPP: 5 - Future Markets - Gain a scav's foresight ability with respect to shortages/surpluses. Incurs cost of -0.1 electronics. Researchable by scav (simply removes it from the pool w/o electronics cost).
PPP: 5 - Rise of the Robots - Replace all workers with robots. Has same effect as being robotic with respect to life support and electronics. All construction costs increased by 25%. Researchable by robotic (simply removes it from the pool w/o cost increase).
PPP: 5 - Increased Efficiency - Gain a scientific's ability to create buildings over resources to be used as input. All construction costs increased by 25%. Researchable by scientific (simply removes it from the pool w/o cost increase).

Silly Suggestions:

PPP: 5 - Salt Additives - Increases colony water use by 200%.
PPP: 8 - Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? - Once researched, all robotic players are unable to perform any action during the night. GO TO BED.
PPP: 6 - Tax Collector - Once researched, at midnight instead of interest being added to every other player's debt, the sum of money the player's would've received is transferred into your account. SPEND SPEND SPEND.

- Deep Core Drilling - +100% Mines output

- Electric Engine - Units are powered by energy (-50% for Robotics)

- Intelligent Resource Management - Factories built adjacent to mines get +50% production (+100% for Robotics)

- Superiour Intelligence (can be researched by all parties) - Shows where Goon Squads are placed and when Black Market purcheses are made and by who

B.

High-yield Biofuels - Hydroponic farms produce 0.1 fuel in addition to 0.5 food for 1 water.

Electrochemical Cells - Electrolysis Reactors produce 0.1 power in addition to 0.5 oxygen and 0.5 fuel.