Research Bureau/Research Points regrind thread.

[Khaba_Gandalf]

On 8/28/2023 at 3:09 PM, Verblonde said:

In addition to what others have said, any newcomers to regrinds may fine this site useful: https://wowsft.com/research

If you click into one of the nations, and select the start and end points of a given research pathway, it'll tell you how much xp you need to complete that pathway. For example, this shows the xp needed to get from the IJN T1 to Harugumo:

dunno, I personally don't find that page really helpful in regards to the RB.

The only meaningful data you get from it is that Haru line offers the best RP/FXP ratio, with costs for a t10 ship being close to the old 2M FXP price tag of hayate and smaland. assuming that one stacks double bonuses thrice and ignoring the credit costs to buy the ships again.

But if you gain your research points by manually regrinding lines and just using FXP to either buy modules or skip some ships in a line, the math gets complicated and it all comes down to personal preferences. which lines does one like, what modules are you willing to skip on a grind and do you have the captains on a line to make the grind enjoyable.

[Nevermore135]

On 8/28/2023 at 6:08 AM, Kaiserliche_garde said:

I have 9 of the 12 Research Bureau ships.  Sevastopol has Speed Boost, a long, slow Repair Party and NO radar 😠.  Siegfried is basically a t9 Gneisenau with a hydro, but the main guns I think are more accurate.  I would say Sevastopol because she's a t10, but with the changes to the Anniversary event thats out the window, same goes for the changes to the Christmas/New Years/Santa event.

Both Siegfried and Sevastopol have standard CA/CL dispersion on their six 380mm guns, in contrast to the CB/CC dispersion found on most other large cruisers. Siegfried is built on the same hull as Agir with only minor differences (fewer secondaries, torpedo tubes embedded in the hull with greater protection but more limited firing angles).

[Verblonde]

3 hours ago, Khaba_Gandalf said:

dunno, I personally don't find that page really helpful in regards to the RB.

The only meaningful data you get from it is that Haru line offers the best RP/FXP ratio, with costs for a t10 ship being close to the old 2M FXP price tag of hayate and smaland. assuming that one stacks double bonuses thrice and ignoring the credit costs to buy the ships again.

But if you gain your research points by manually regrinding lines and just using FXP to either buy modules or skip some ships in a line, the math gets complicated and it all comes down to personal preferences. which lines does one like, what modules are you willing to skip on a grind and do you have the captains on a line to make the grind enjoyable.

Absolutely right! I merely mentioned the page as it can provide useful information for some when determining which line they may wish to reset.

For any newbies, this is what is being discussed here:

If we look at Kitakaze as an example:

This illustrates that there are four modules available to be upgraded: hull, torps (two), and fire control. As you can see, you only need to research the second hull to be able to progress to the T10.

The fitting tool - if you select just Kitakaze and Harugumo - gives a number of 249K xp:

Looking at the wiki, we see that Harugumo herself has a research price of 223K:

Returning to Kitakaze:

You can see the research costs of the various modules; the hull one costs 26K - combined with Harugumo's cost, that gives us the 249K.

However, it will cost more than that to fully upgrade Kitakaze *and* unlock Harugumo.

As others have said, this complicates one's decision-making if you're not simply free-xping your way to T10. For example, in this specific case, if you're going to play Kitakaze against real people, you'll probably want to take *at least* one of the non-essential (for progression) upgrades and that changes the xp calculus (especially since this general process applies all the way up the tech tree).

FWIW I use the IJN DDs as my regrind lines for several reasons:

• Their base cost is comparatively inexpensive (I've never bothered to work out the 'extended cost').
• I have a lot of premium IJN DDs, so I don't lose much due to not having the relevant silver ships in port while I'm regrinding (so if a mission comes along that calls for IJN DDs, I feel no pressure to hurry the regrind).
• I have good captains available for all the ships that I'm likely to play.
• Most importantly, I enjoy playing most of the ships involved, so making the regrind less of a chore.

As others have said, the optimal line to pick for regrinding will vary from player to player...

[Khaba_Gandalf]

23 hours ago, Verblonde said:

FWIW I use the IJN DDs as my regrind lines for several reasons:

Their base cost is comparatively inexpensive (I've never bothered to work out the 'extended cost').

• I have a lot of premium IJN DDs, so I don't lose much due to not having the relevant silver ships in port while I'm regrinding (so if a mission comes along that calls for IJN DDs, I feel no pressure to hurry the regrind).
• I have good captains available for all the ships that I'm likely to play.
• Most importantly, I enjoy playing most of the ships involved, so making the regrind less of a chore.

As others have said, the optimal line to pick for regrinding will vary from player to player...

Like I said, for me there is no "optimal line" even if we talk about one single account over a longer time period given the changes WG has made in the past.

My check-list for picking lines is similar to yours with a couple of differences/more nerd-crafting (more about that later):

• The line needs to be fun and if it has any bad apples, they shouldn't be in high tier. I would never reset a line where the t8 or 9 feels like a ship that I'd rather skip with fxp than playing or end up taking the FXP route out of frustration after a couple of rounds with it. 
• The captains should be up to the task. Regardless of how fun a line is, if I have to invest in getting decent captains on a handful of ships first, I'd rather not do it due to the costs of getting max-level captain nowadays. As a quick example: While I enjoy the french DDs, I would never reset them. They are gun-boat DDs, hence they need a high level captain and since I lack decent commanders below T10 on pretty much all of my french lines, the initial investment cost would be too high/I'd rather spend those points on maxing out captains on t10 ships. 
• I play CBs and I don't want to rush a regrind, I'm not resetting lines where I'm expected to play the t10 ship in CBs. For me that rules out some cruisers and DDs, since I don't play BBs in CBs.
• Access to permanent eco-boosters on t8-9 to speed up the main part of the grinds, regardless of the source (old permanent camos from before the rework, freely earned spare boosters after).

 

Given that logic, the only lines I tend to reset since the commander rework happened are RN-CLs, both soviet DD branches and the Harugumo-line. Those where the lines that I both enjoyed and could reshuffle captains with decent commander-levels on during said rework on.  The 3 DDs picks are my main go-to choices, with RN being my backup if I need to more RB points fast or get bored playing those DDs. That could change if WG ever introduces T9 to Operations as they have talked about in the past, esp. if they rework the MM rules. RN CLs are pretty comfortable to play in Ops, thanks to heal+smoke.

What did change since then is my perception of the cost/benefit ratio of those DD lines, thanks to WGs rework of the economic systems a while ago.  I did run the math in the past on regrind costs and speed back in the old system and when WG changed the eco system I ran said calculations again for using either t3 or t4 lv boosters, comparing the results.

I'm not going to explain the math behind numbers, because I did some of said math with a calculator+good old paper and didn't keep track on how I came up with the modifiers (so my excel sheet only has the modifiers, but no explanation how I came up with them). 

So let's take a look at RU DD lines: Total cost of ship-XP=1.08M XP from T6 to T10 (=skipping T2-5 with FXP) and total cost of moduls/fxping the low-tier ships= 415k

My modifier for XP in the old system was x9.5 and my BXP-average per round was ~1100. So those 1.08M XP translate into ~115k BXP, which means 104 rounds (114k/1100) on average. With the stacking of camos and signals every BXP earns me 8.2FXP, that's ~935k FXP gain vs 415k FXP investment. 

 I get a ~15.75 XP modifier at worst (t5-7 perma booster + blue 800% booster + clan base + premium account), so running the math with access to perm boosters drops the number of BXP needed down from 114k to 67k and the number of rounds down from 104 to 64.

Here's the issue for me:

While in the old system ship XP influenced FXP gains, in the new system the calculation is FXP=10% of BXP x Premium Account x (1+sum of boosters&clan base). Now the changes are a blessing if say you want to farm credits, FXP and ECXP on a ship that you don't need to grind. But for regrinds to pay off for themselves?

T8 perma + blue booster 8 = +2500% XP and T8+red booster = +7300%. That a x4.3 modifier for a rare booster and a x12.2 modifier for a unique booster. Those 67k BXP from above gives me a 289k FXP gain for the blue booster and a 817k for the red one vs 415k of costs regardless of what boosters I choose. And since red boosters are way more finite and harder to get for free than blue ones, I wouldn't run my regrind calculation on red ones.

That means each regrind on both RU-DDs with blue boosters nets me a loss of ~126k FXP, unless I grind the whole line without skipping any low-tier ships, which reduces the loss to ~ 70k. Both numbers are fine with me, because I play other ships on top of regrinds and what I earn between two RB resets within 3 months is more than i lose on said grind. Thus the only really big hits to my FXP reserves are skipping new ships or lines (for example I completely FXP all sub and CV lines just for collector purposes).

With the Harugumo line, which I also skip up to T8 since I loath anything below Akizuki with a vengence, running blue boosters is a -283k loss per grind and even burning red boosters on it wouldn't be enough to get out of the red. Because we are now talking about ~255k FXP for those tiers and a reduced number of rounds to get from T8 to T10 down from 36 to 23 rounds, while making less FXP per BXP with blue boosters vs the old system.

And that's why I stopped regrinding IJN DDs, unless there is an ongoing ranked seasons that's either T8+9 or like the one now T8 in bronze and T9 in silver. Aki and Kita are way more comfortable to play for me in ranked than say Kiev and Tashkent , but in randoms I don't care (bigger teams = more DDs to do the spotting for me on average) and it bleeds less FXP. Which isn't unimportant to me, since WG really revved up their release schedules and started to put restrict the numbers of freely gained blue+red boosters from big events like WoWs anniversary and SC drops in general.

So right now I have all three DD lines reset, because of the ongoing ranked season. With WG changes to the anniversary event I may nerd out again and redo my calculation, how long it will take me with regrinds and new releases to burn through my stock of boosters and if I want to spend hard money on the cashback voucher for dubs to spend on the battlepass or not.

 

 

 

 

Edited August 31, 2023 by Khaba_Gandalf