My family is gearing up for a 3 day family reunion (aka 72hr lan partie) and BOTF is on the list. my question is once you get level 10 in all your fields and start working on future tech levels. Does this give you a bonus in the particular field or is it just for flash. No one seems to know the answer...or I should say no one is willing to let the others know they have the answer.

of course you still get bonuses.
several damage and shields calculations inside botf have the tech level as direct multipliers in the formulas. So it's best to keep researching energy and weapons for that matter.

The Defiant also needs level 11 I think.

maybe you should posts such kinds of questions in the real botf afc, meaning here:
http://armadafleetcommand.com/botf/index.php

oh ok thanks

Err, I'm fairly certain that researching extra levels grant no additional bonuses at all in Birth of the Federation.

For starters, each ship has hard-coded statistics. No amount of weapons research will make your Destroyer 1's deal more damage. If research levels did grant bonuses, it would be visible throughout the game as you progress through levels 1-10. But, the only benefit you get is better technology... until you've researched it all. It MAY be possible that ONLY future techs grant passive bonuses, but I still doubt it enough to put money on it. But, at that point, if you are sitting at tech 10, there's probably better things you could be doing with that population.

Secondly, the Defiant requires level 10 technology levels in 3 or 4 different fields. The Sovereign II's also require level 10 tech in 3 or 4 fields, some of them in different fields than the Defiant (like computers).

When I have researched everything there is to research, I shutdown all research-related buildings (I leave them up though as they are part of the "pool of buildings" that sabotage can be used against, thus granting a chance my useless research buildings will get hit instead of my factories/farms/intel). I then build more factories or more intel buildings to take advantage of the extra population I am no longer using.

While the passive bonuses might be nice, chances are you would be better served with a bigger fleet or stronger intel (depending on race). Romulans and Cardassians should DEFINITELY chuck the research grind once they have researched their top-tiered ships and invest more heavily in intel.

Federation should probably also drop all research tasks in favor of intel and production. The intel would be used for strengtening your internal security, plus the Feds aren't half bad at covert-ops if the Romulans and Cards aren't a major problem. Also, every covert-op a Fed performs is free from morale hits to your systems, so that's definitely a plus. Not to mention that Federation ships are very strong and building more of them faster is never a bad thing.

Ferengi might benefit from passive research bonuses, if they exist, simply because Ferengi typically have huge fleets due to cheap production. So, if there is a passive effect of, say, +5% damage for Tech 11 weapons or +5% shielding, it would be highly beneficial as their ships are still easy to build, and each one would have that boost.

Klingons... I'm not really sure. Great combat ships for sure, and they sure could use passive bonuses (again, if they exist :p ), but man do they suck at intel. I've never had any luck playing as the Klingons as the Roms, Cards, and Feds all mess with my empire with covert-ops, then follow up with military force. So I'm not sure what to say about them.

So in conclusion... I'm relatively sure there is no point in researching past tech 10. Even if there was a point, chances are there are better options for those units of population (and energy for the special buildings which could translate into more population free) then dedicating it to research that would take a whole lot of turns. I'd rather knock a turn off my Defiant build time, for example.

wohoo azh, I was actually starting to miss those longs

about the tech, why are you so sure about it? Never experienced better battle outcome when your weapon tech was only 1 point higher?

btw. I know for sure (cause it is written inside botf in the building description) that energy tech (no matter if higher than 10 or below) adds 50% to the planetary shields efficiency and that's just one example so maybe you start researching again in your botf games, might have been the reason for some games lost in the past ain't it

Guess I should have paid more attention to my games as well. I have 4 that I took over 5000 turns. I just never changed much once I had my things set.

I ALWAYS carry on researching - albeit not as intensively - because you DO still get bonuses!

EVERY "production tech" in the game gives you a 2% bonus - Food, Energy, and Construction.

If you research a new level in one of these tech fields, you will gain a 2% production bonus - irrespective of whether you upgrade your buildings or not.

It doesn't sound like much, but those bonuses build up - obviously it is accumulative. I can eventually get my systems running on just one (Working) food and sometimes even energy structure.

The additional population blocks can then go into intel or construction.

MoE's word is law, then :p

I was looking at things from a ship-standpoint. So, I guess what could be ideal is to keep the subatomic simulators and the field-specific reasearch buildings from the minors online, but simply remove the population from the research buildings.

Also, it sounds like there is little point to researching weapons, computers, and propulsion.

the weapons are for battle damage. believe, every half-way realistic game (and botf is one of em) would add weapon tech as a direct multiplier in various damage-hit-calculations, so keep up the researching, it's the only way anyway since you cannot build ships the whole time when having peace since the maintenance costs .. ya know.

propulsion gives you more green space to go to with less outposts (tested and experienced this at various times.

computer tech gets you better intel, I'm sure.

I'm pretty positive that ships deal the same amount of damage since the day they were built. I can see propulsion increasing your ship ranges, though as that is noticeable in the game when researching levels 1-10.

Hmm... maybe computers does grant a bonus to the intel/research buildings; I can see that happening. But weapons.... I dunno. I wouldn't put money on it, but I still think that the ships themselves do not receive combat-related bonuses from research.

We'd need to test it. Too bad that'd take several hours to even prepare for it :p