Intopia Strategies: R&D Specialist

If you've seen video of Boston Dynamics robots anytime in the past couple of years, you're probably aware of two things: first, the machine overlords are coming; Second, specialized companies can get scarily efficient at doing one thing really well. It's no different in the Intopia simulation. If you meet the criteria, there are some unique strategies available to you. Today, I'm going to give you my take on the R&D specialist.

R&D specialists focus on obtaining higher grade patents, then licensing (or pooling) those patents out to other players for a profit. The bonus to research that R&D specialists receive is unspecified, but given the way the game is set up, my guess is they'll be allowed to hire a larger number of scientists before receiving diminishing returns. The requirements to get and maintain status as an R&D specialist  are as follows: don't allocate more then 65% of your R&D budget to one product, and maintain a factory for both products. 

It's probably worth a brief overview of Intopia's research mechanics right about now. 

Everytime a patent becomes available, it's assigned a threshold value.  You must accumulate more in R&D spending then the threshold value to obtain the patent. It's not that simple though, because you don't spend directly on R&D, you hire scientists who have a multiple attached to them. To obtain a patent, you must accumulate more spending on scientist salaries multiplied by the efficiency of your scientists than the threshold value of the patent. 

Extremely confusing I know, but the important info to get out of this is that both the amount of money you need to get a patent and the efficency at which you can spend money are randomized. In other words, if your risk averse, the R&D specialist probably isn't for you. R&D is heavily reliant on RnG(Random number generation), funnily enough. Of course there are constraints on the RnG— you're not going to get a patent that needs a billion dollars to research. But nonetheless, if your patents are expensive and your scientists are lazy, you're going to have a bad time.  The reverse is also true. So if you're looking to high-roll your way into first place, the R&D specialist is probably worth your consideration. 

Of course as an R&D specialist, getting new patents is only half the battle. You've also got to find people willing to buy them. Herein lies a bit of a problem because license transfers require a full period to take effect. Consequently, whomever you're selling to, won't be able to purchase higher grade products right away. This means that if they happen to invent the patent with their own scientists the turn after they buy the license, then the money they spent on your license will have been completely wasted. Since so much of the research process is randomized, this could pose a serious problem in any negotiations you enter. 

There may be a business model of R&D specialist that is less vulnerable to this transfer time dilemma.

Any companies that co register in a patent pool (4 company max) automatically share patents without transfer time. I could envision a business model where 3 firms pay some type of subscription fee to automatically gain access to an R&D firm's patents without the turn delay. You would need a lot of cross company trust for this to work though, as the patents themselves are shared in a pool, not just the licenses. So the other firms in the pool could stab you in the back and go out licensing the patents themselves. 

By now you'll probably know if the R&D specialist is for you. If you're a skilled negotiator, ready to take a ton of risk and work hard, you could do phenomenally well with the R&D specialist. If you're just looking to pass the class and not stress yourself, look elsewhere.