Intergalactic Research Network

Does this make researching faster if you have this? If not what is the advantage?

Please make sure you post in a place that's relevant. Thread moved to Questions.

It does speed up research. The amount is unknown to me. If you look at the wiki, it says that it increases the research level. So with IRN lvl 1 and 2 lvl 10 labs, you would research as if you had a lvl 20 lab. I did the math and found that this was not worthwhile, as the difference between lvl 10 and 30 is around 7% increase in speed. From experience, I know that is NOT the case. It is less than double. I have IRN lvl 2 with 2 lvl 10 labs and a lvl 9. It greatly reduces the time I need for long researches (hyperdrive 8 in 2 days 16 hours), but no a super reduction.

Best place to understand

http://ogame.wikia.com/wiki/Intergalactic_Research_Network

As I said, that is not entirely correct.

If you do the math, you will see that as your lab level increases, the gain per level decreases. Namely, it works as the reduction of time is 1/(1+next lvl). So when you have lvl 0 and get lvl 1, that is a 1/(1+1) improvement. So carry that math out. When you hit 10 and go for 11, you get a 1/(1+11) reduction of time, which is really small. Now go from 20 to 21. Now try 30 to 31. It is cumulative, which helps, but each new level helps less and less.

From what I've seen while using IRN, the improvement per level is different than the described formula. It is better by a significant amount.

Does it sum the reduction from your three research labs individually instead of all as one research lab?

So in your case instead of 1/(1+29) it would be 1/(1+10) + 1/(1+10) + 1/(1+9).

I'm not entirely sure. I know what the math shows me and what I observe ingame. I haven't bothered to come up with a formula that matches observed behavior. But you could well be correct.