Currently the science output for science stations is VERY excessive. Please halve it. See game 1320 uploaded.

The science station output on ships is kind of weak, halving it across the board will still leave stations as the only viable place for them. I kind of think they should be made into a turret slot item and balanced around that. Kill the overpowered space station / shipyard science orbital problem, while leaving more expensive starbase/fleetbase options and not nerfing ships. I don't build starbases or fleetbases much, I might start doing so if they don't have to compete with basic space stations with a science module.

Respectfully disagree.
A fully manned tier 1 research lab provides 6 points of research. A fully manned tier 2 lab provides 10.
A scout lab in a light cruiser provides 4 points per lab (remember most light cruiser classes have AT LEAST 2 turrets, some races have more)
Research ships should be IMO a help to science output, not the only output needed.
Even halving the current output would make them valuable, but they wouldn't be the only means of research needed.
In addition, Space scanners are already reserved to turret mounts, and where makes a more appropriate place for a science lab then a scoutship ?
I would expect for science stations to even be mounted in a hull, a space scanner would be needed, after all, you need data to be able to sort it, no ?

Option 2: keep the output of science labs the same, BUT cap their maximum total output to being equal to the total of ground based facilities. IE If I have only 40 points in ground based science production, I can only process 40 more from space based facilities.

I think the piece you're missing is that the output on the science stations is based on the number of system points in the slot. Space stations have a system(40) slot and a system(20) slot, with the 40 giving +14 science and the 20 giving +7 science. So, right now it looks like 0.35 points per slot. The 4 you see on a light cruisers is probably from having 10 system points in the system slot, giving 3.5 science and then rounding up to 4.

Turret slots have a much lower point count than system slots; 10 points of turret is considerably harder to come by than 10 points of system. And, at these conversions a turret(2) and a turret(4) would both give 1 point of science due to rounding (I think, I'm assuming 1.4 would round down). Switching to turret slots from system slots would be a massive output nerf just due to the relative size and availability of the two slots.

If the yield per point were increased to 0.5 you could get 1 or 2 science points per turret on most hulls, at the expensive of weapons or point defense. I'm not sure what the best turret using ship is, but if I'm recalling numbers correctly off the top of my head the Human battleship would only end up with 6 science if it replaced every turret, putting it on par with a tier 1 lab while costing more maintenance and metal and severely hurting its combat performance. Granted, most labs don't have _any_ guns, so it would definitely win the most-well-armed-tier-1-lab contest.

Something must have changed because I never counted on stations for anything other than building ships. I never thought to put science modules on them. Yet with technology being built in 8-10 days, that's fast enough for me, and I still outpace the AI.

In fact, I can't even remember a station successfully defending a planet of mine.

Anywho, something new for me to try.

The main issue with turrets being for your science stations in my opinion is that the ships for the various races vary HUGELY there, where as system slots are fairly constant across ship class. A scout / destroyer hull getting 1 point per science station would work (currently they get 2). Requiring a deep space scanner (mounted in a turret) to use the lab would also be nice ( thus forcing a more science dedicated hull). Putting science stations into turrets would just give the more militant races (gremak) more science ability, and the peaceful ones (phidi) less.

Chasm wrote:The main issue with turrets being for your science stations in my opinion is that the ships for the various races vary HUGELY there

This is an excellent argument against moving to turret slot.

I think most folks don't much like the idea of getting a bunch of science off military ships (or cheap stations), so perhaps instead of being a module at all the science station technology could be a modification you attach to the deep space scanner already existing on the scout hull, like the various weapon mods? Maybe add a second modification further up the tree to increase it again.

This would give scouts some useful upgrades and a reason to use new power plants, allowing for modest extra science without being able to utterly replace your planet-bound research with ships.

Either that or cap science output based on ground stations, each ground lab can support up to its output in space research. We already have something in place like this for freighters / markets, why not Science labs / ground labs.

i don't think capping the output is a great solution. That just limits the impact rather than keeps it balanced-for-effort.

From the description i intuitively read science stations as something that can interact with anomalies for science gain. You could extend its use by giving science for scanning debris fields after a battle, or another similar 'post-exploration' utility.

TheDeadlyShoe wrote: You could extend its use by giving science for scanning debris fields after a battle, or another similar 'post-exploration' utility.

I really like this notion too. Give you a reason to keep a scout or two in a combat fleet if they can provide a science boost from wreckage.