Automatic infinite research

[mrvn]

Setting research per science lab would be nice. It would allow producing only a few military science packs and research military stuff in a few labs and research all the other stuff in parallel in the rest.

This could even be automatic. When you set a goal then each lab would request science packs needed to reach that goal. And then pick something research towards that goal according to which science packs it actually has. Every time a science pack gets added or runs out the lab would switch if it could possibly research something else towards the goal.

As for setting the research per circuits: What signal to use is indeed the problem. Giving each research a number would work but then you install a mod or a new version comes out and all the numbers will be different. I don't really see that working.

[Qon]

tbh, I'd rather see a change that would include yours, but with an additional twist : I'd like to be able to "aim" for a research. For example, I'd like to aim from start "Automation 2", and the game to automatically search all the prerequisites for me, beforesearching the research I wanted.
It would decline in "aiming" the last of infinite researches, and behave exactly the way OP wants.

A fairly large portion of Auto Research functionality could be ported to vanilla like this with very little extra GUI buttons. Sounds like a good suggestion. If you want several types of infinite techs (but maybe not all types) I don't see how this would be able to do them all in order of research cost unless you can have multiple "aims" simultanously.

Setting research per science lab would be nice. It would allow producing only a few military science packs and research military stuff in a few labs and research all the other stuff in parallel in the rest.

This could even be automatic. When you set a goal then each lab would request science packs needed to reach that goal. And then pick something research towards that goal according to which science packs it actually has. Every time a science pack gets added or runs out the lab would switch if it could possibly research something else towards the goal.

As for setting the research per circuits: What signal to use is indeed the problem. Giving each research a number would work but then you install a mod or a new version comes out and all the numbers will be different. I don't really see that working.

Research per lab seems way too complicated for very little gain. For the devs the feature seems like something that has an audience that is 1% of automatic research, 1% as beneficial as automatic research (for the target audience of the feature!) and probably 10000% as complicated/time consuming to code while also making your factory potentially run slightly (probably very small effect though) slower since you can't do the same optimisations. Your military focused circuit research complex will be useless quickly when higher level research requires more packs. Low value feature.

Let all labs research the same thing, the speed is the same. Parallel research just slows all research down since each research gets less labs each. Sequential research means that you get the benefit of the thing you research first while you research the second one, so it will actually be faster. If your military science production is slower, buffer it and only start research once you have enough buffered up to complete a full military research.