Did you know that? (Dominions trivia)

[fungalreason]

I think you used to be able to, but now you can no longer see the enemy sites on the F1 screen.

[vfb]

You only see the site details on the F1 screen for enemy forts you are sieging.

[Soyweiser]

Do you know that research points can go negative?
This has some effects:
First a magic user set to research will always add at least one rp.
Second you well never see if a magic user has negative research points.
Third rp increaser's will start to increase rp from the negative rp total.
Fourth, a rp experience bonus will decrease the negative penalty.

Fifth, an example:
Say you have a druid. Base rp 1, and you have drain -3.
The druid rp is now -1. When set to research he will provide 1 rp to your research.
After a few turns the druid gets experience. This increases his rp to 0.
After destroying Ermor, you have a few spare skull mentors. You equip one on the druid. His rp increases by 9. So now your druid has research ability 9. (Not 10 as you would expect from the druid status screen).

[Tifone]

Nice spot Soyweiser

[Soyweiser]

Originally Posted by Tifone

Nice spot Soyweiser

Actually this strange behaviour had me wondering for a long time. I equipped rp increaser's on mages, and I didn't get the full bonus. So I went experimenting and this is what I found. Eventually the whole mess made sense.

[lch]

Looks like Edi should add this to the bug shortlist. The minimum RP should be 0 or 1, it probably was an oversight that they can go negative. I'd think that this check would only be done after all the RP are added together, too.

[Zeldor]

lch: It's not negative. It's 1 RP base, -2RP from Drain2 + 9RP booster +1 from XP. So 9 total [but it had RP1 in description all the time, so you'd expect it to get at 10 or 11 with mentor and xp].

[lch]

Yes, I understood that, Zeldor. The real mechanic behind it for performing research seems to be doing ok. But the infoscreen for the commander isn't.

[Soyweiser]

Originally Posted by lch

Looks like Edi should add this to the bug shortlist. The minimum RP should be 0 or 1, it probably was an oversight that they can go negative. I'd think that this check would only be done after all the RP are added together, too.

I don't agree. If this is fixed, it would reduce the drain-3 penalty. With this 'bug', drain-3 is harder to circumvent with indy mages.

(edit: While I do think the effect must be make clear. Something like: Research ability 1 (-1).)
(edit2: I do think that the above description is not totally accurate. I doubt that under the hood it is really a negative research ability. I think that the penalty is just subtracted as the last effect. But research ability can never go lower than 1. It's a detail I know).
(edit3: I forgot to refresh this page, multiple tabs... meh).

[sector24]

Isn't it a bug that -3 research = 1 RP but 0 research = 0 RP?