You can set an RD_Premium on products. The description reads: ''a value of 100 means that the R&D cost for the product will be 100% higher than the standard cost.''
However this does not seem to be an accurate description.`I've found that it does not increase the actual R&D cost or time of a product in the R&D Center whatsoever. Then I thought, ah maybe they meant the R&D purchase cost when you buy it from a competitor ... but no ... it also doesn't increase the cost for a competitor or for your player to purchase the R&D tech either.
What I DID find that it impacts is the actual cost of goods as they are shipped through the seaport ... strangely of all things ...
While this seems to barely effect most products which have the R&D premium effect enabled on them due to their high initial cost anyway such as CPU's, it can effect other products when you put an R&D premium on them. I for example originally thought that the RD_Premium tag would increase the cost of R&D for certain products so I placed this on ''Electronic Components'' at 200% premium only to find that the seaport now exports this product for over a $100 from its standard price of only $10
Can someone tell me what RD_premium is supposed to actually do?
And it would be nice if it was actually possible to influence the cost of R&D of individual products and the acquiring cost of R&D by yourself or as a competitor from another party.
This would be mostly of importance to a product such as Automobiles which I'd estimate would have real life higher costs for R&D (crash testing and prototyping) and would be in line with the fact that the Automobile class only has 2 products but right now they cost just as much to research as a Canned Corn ...
Thanks for reading!
Brutus
