I see you point. It is my belief that the developers will have tons of new things/technologies for us to research in the long run so that at the end of year 1 we'd be happy to have a small percentage of them covered. And I'm not even thinking about the many talented modders who are just begining to show their potential.

Research is a bit underwhelming in the game, unfortunately so. A lot of the research goes in tandem with the resources you find, you can´t build freezers before you have enough electronics to support a small power grid.

I usually have Vivien on the research table, she starts with 1 and isn´t interested, yet she manages to keep up just fine with the needs and they match the resources gathered.

Before first winter with Vivien researching I usually have everything built with freezers and power grid. There are only a few research opportunities where are handy with a better researcher like Balloon Optimisation and Fuel Fermentation, that however usually in my case only gets delayed by a small margin.

Indeed - we wouldn't want her too OP. Consider this: in a matter of minutes Hope will also receive the update for the Synth trait which ammends basic needs. But, truth be told, her intellect is the only real weapon she has. And the difference for research/observantion and learning curve given by 10 in intellect will help a lot, despite the initial setback.

Seems like a perfect character to do research only Been using Krista for research, mainly, which I think has skill 7 when starting. Do you know the difference in research speed between 7 and 10? Hope can't do research breakthroughs though, right? Would be too OP?