In its current form, the R&D concept is a failure. It fails because at some point, all things that can possibly be researched will have been researched. People will have Research Facilities only as long as they need them, and then will dismantle them for production and war facilities. Eventually, new Houses will eschew researching their own technologies and will just buy all the ones they need, or have them provided by friends and allies. Essentially, there must be a way devised to make technology more precious; to make Houses guard and pride their technologies, and prevent one House from knowing all technologies. Also, to prevent the possibility of all technologies being researched at all times, have a mechanism to remove technologies from the masses.

When I thought about that, it suddenly put technologies in a different light altogether. Think about it. It's something that people will develop, stockpile, trade, utilize and protect. It's a resource. Just like Tiberium in Command and Conquer, wood and ore in Warcraft, and spice in Dune, technology will be a resource that people will collect (research) and trade, utilize it in manufacturing, and steal from others. These rules will be applied as follows:

Storage One limiting factor that curtailed the possibility of raping the lands of resources and storing enough goods to last forever is storage constraints. Namely, you must build a storage facility to house of your resources. Further, it's good advice to keep multiple storage containers, separated if possible, since these containers will be an immediate target to the attacking enemy (all your eggs in one basket). A further extension to the storage limitations is that having to store technology (in physical computer banks) would limit the actual number of technologies that you could have, based on your financial backing (or land restrictions).

Quality If you look at research as an actual item instead of a skill, you can apply qualities to it. Namely, one House can have a better understanding of Technology X than another House. By that, they develop higher quality items. In keeping with our theme, technologies that are purchased from another House or the government will be a mediocre quality. In opposition, a technology that a House has developed itself has a large chance of being of higher quality, much in the way that a House would understand a technology better if they'd developed it and researched it themselves rather than reading a couple of government blue books on the subject.

With these two concepts in mind, the current state of research in Bellicose can be changed in the following ways. Firstly, instead of a technology requiring X stages to be developed, it will require X successful stages, with human intervention (evaluation and adjustment) increasing the chances of a stage being completed.

Next, there will be varying masteries of technologies. Namely, one House may have a 50% mastery of a technology, while another will have a 80%. The greater your mastery of a technology, the higher quality products based on that technology. When a technology is bought from the government, it is only bought at a base mastery of (say) 50%. When a technology is bought from another House, the selling House has the option of selling up to 80% of it's own mastery. Namely, if one House has a 75% mastery of a technology, it can sell a base 60% of that technology to another house (70%*80%).

The research tree can be modified to include masteries requirements. For example, in order to build flying armor suits, a House must have a 90% mastery of Lightweight Alloys, but in order to create a flying vehicle, a 100% mastery of Lightweight Alloys is required.

Each technology will have its stats changed to include the concept of mastery. Namely, instead of requiring X number of successful stages to completion, it will require X number of complete stages per 10% mastery. In this way, the longer you work on a technology, the higher your mastery will become.

Finally, technologies will be stored in computer banks. These are large mainframe computers that must be stored in the research lab or in a Data Storage Center (DSC), which is a cooled environment designed to house these large computers. For example, if you build a basic Research Lab, it comes with two mainframes, allowing you to research two technologies. In order to research any more technologies, you'd need to purchase a DSC, the most basic of which can house four mainframes. The inexpensive DSCs don't come with mainframes, so you'll have to buy them yourself as needed.

A technology will require its own mainframe, even if said technology is only 1% mastered. Further, the mainframe that the technology is stored on must be operational (powered and undamaged). If the mainframe is damaged (such as during an attack) then that technology may be lost. If a technology is lost (or inaccessible), then products immediately requiring that technology cannot be manufactured.

It may be necessary to establish a difference between merely researching something, and developing it. Namely, you can research plasma guns, but you'd also need to research Plasma Gun Manufacturing Factories. In this regards, destroying a House's DSCs containing their Plasma Gun technologies will not prevent them from creating more, but it would prevent them from improving the technology until they re-research it.

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Getting pretty complex, huh? Luckily, it's all tentative and subject to change.