As announced earlier, and introduced a little later than originally intended, I've made some changes to the development system.
The research level was introduced to make the development less of a gamble, but it required a transition season to avoid too much of a sudden change.
I've applied the following changes with immediate effect.
Maximum research level shown
The maximum research level is the maximum level that the research level can reach. Once this level is reached, it's pointless to do further researching as the maximum has been reached.
This maximum is a calculation of the quality of your design team.
Team research level calculation
In the transition season the research level was only the skill set of the designer, now it's the entire team. In other words: the maximum level of the research level was the skill level of the designer, now it's of all designers in the design team (which can be assigned from the Personnel > Staff page).
This is very important, so please do read this before you post on the forum that there's a bug: This means that up until yesterday your research level was probably (unless you already have an amazing design team with multiple junior designers) higher than what is shown now. This is because the head designer is no longer responsible for the full 100% of the research level rating, but only for xx% (how much I keep a secret, but it's less than 75%). So we are in a similar situation as we were when the system was introduced, but now teams can do something about it: hire junior designers, add them to the design team and the maximum research level will increase. Any changes that are done in the design team will be reflected straight away in the maximum research level (so changes like who is the head designer, or adding/removing a junior designer are shown right away in the maximum research level).
Research level reduction
The research level reduces when a chassis or part is designed, but it was also applying this for upgrading a chassis or a part. I decided that this is a bit too much as the research level already took a hit originally and the potential was already calculated (reminder: the potential level of a part is based mainly on the research level, not the current level), and I've remove this. From now on the research level will no longer reduce when you upgrade a part or chassis.
For now the maximum research level is the same for each part, but as I mentioned in the introduction of the system, but in the future this will be changed by having designers who are more specialized in certain areas (such as gearboxes) than others.
There was a bit of confusion about the system since its introduction, and I think a large part was played by the fact that everyone was a bit over-inflated on their research level numbers.
As a general rule: it's pointless to do research if your current research level is higher than your maximum research level.
These changes are the first of a set of changes that I want to introduce to the game to make the game more transparent and fun to play.
