Research Centers

Research in Atomic Dawn is carried out by research centers: national laboratories, university institutes and state design offices. Each center provides one research slot, and each slot works on one project from the Technology Trees at a time. Unlike a National Focus, of which a country pursues one at a time, research runs in parallel: a country with five centers can advance five projects at once.

How many centers to fund is one of the central economic choices of the game. More centers mean faster progress across more fields, but every center beyond the first is a permanent line in the budget.

Centers on the map

Centers are physical institutions that sit in provinces, at most one per province. When a country adds a center it is placed in its most populous province that does not yet have one; when it closes one, the center in its least populous province goes first, and the capital's is kept to the last. A country always keeps at least one.

Because centers belong to the provinces they stand in, they count for whoever owns the province. Losing a province in a war or a peace settlement can therefore cost a country one of its slots.

In the 1946 scenario 220 centers exist worldwide. The major industrial powers start with several (the United States opens with seven), while many smaller or poorer countries start with only the one in their capital.

Adding and closing centers

Centers can be added and closed from the research screen, which shows the number of centers, the slots in use and the monthly maintenance. Several national focuses also found new centers: the generic National Research Expansion tree, available to most countries, builds toward a First, Second, Third and Fourth Research Institute, each adding a center, and some national trees offer one as a reward (the United States' postwar opening can expand its veterans' education with an additional center). Centers from focuses carry the normal maintenance.

Maintenance

The capital's first research center is free. Every additional center costs, each year, 0.35% of GDP plus $250 million, charged monthly, then multiplied by Research Center Cost.

The fixed part makes centers relatively expensive for small countries; the GDP share keeps them significant even for the largest. Some research lowers the cost (Mainframe Computers cuts it by 10%), while High Energy Physics raises it by 5%, reflecting the expense of big laboratories.

The budget lists center maintenance as Research Centers Maintenance, separately from Research Policy Spending and from the installments of active projects. See Money & the Budget and Debt.

What a center does not do

A center provides capacity, not speed. How fast each project progresses depends on the country's research speed, which comes from:

• research-speed modifiers from laws, research and focuses (Research Speed);
• research spending as a share of GDP, where every 1% of GDP adds 0.10 speed (Research Spending);
• the country's Education, which adds or subtracts up to a quarter.

Speed can never fall below a quarter of normal. See Technology Trees for how cost and duration are calculated.

Choosing how many to run

• A rich, threatened power can afford many centers and needs them: military, nuclear and economic research all compete for slots.
• A small or developing country may find even a second center a heavy burden, and do better concentrating on a few foundational projects, or joining research-sharing Treaties that discount projects its partners have already finished.
• A country in debt can close centers to save money, at the cost of running fewer projects at once.

The AI follows the same rules. It weighs whether its economy can carry a center before pursuing the National Research Expansion focuses, and stops opening new projects once its debt reaches three years of GDP.