Empire Research Reform Thread - Star Wars: Interregnum mod for Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion

In playing as Empire, I've rather struggled to find a use for the Base Delta Zero and Forced Taxation research options. The drawbacks seem to far outweigh the benefits, particularly when using Expanded Research on anything but the smallest of maps. BDZ increases bombing damage but at the cost of crippling your culture output. FT increases your taxation levels by reducing your maximum allegiance. Both of them double down on things that the Empire is already quite good at, and make their real weakness - culture - even worse. FT seems particularly weak since decreased allegiance also reduces credit and resource income. Beyond all that, these research options don't really support one of the constant mantras of the empire, that "Fear will keep the locals in line".

I'd like to suggest that these research options be altered to be less of a drawback on larger maps. Perhaps they should increase culture resistance, so that the Empire's propaganda stations are effective at maintaining order even if they can't persuade others of the Imperial cause. Or perhaps some other form of benefit can be identified that is worth crippling your cultural output. As it is, I can't really see why you'd ever research them. Either the map is small enough that the game ends before you are finishing up your research tree, or the map is large enough that the empire doesn't really need the benefits being offered by them.

Am I off base? I don't play a lot of multiplayer games on small maps these days, so perhaps I'm missing something.

For Base Delta Zero, keep in mind that Imperial Capitalships and Titans are the best as repulsing culture thanks to the Tarkin Doctrine Tech. Imperial culture may not be as strong as Rebel or Advent culture, but they can definitely remove it where it matters thanks to these suppression bonuses. On the other hand bombing out enemy planets quickly is always helpful, while you don't always have culture issues each game.

Forced Taxation I believe gives a total of +20% planet income at the cost of 2% allegiance. That's a net 18% extra credit income from taxes on all planets at the cost to 2% lower resource income. It should absolutely still be a positive economic boost, at the cost of making the Empire very slightly more vulnerable to losing planets to culture. But again, they can always build more Star Destroyers to deal with that.