Research and Tech Tree

How Research Works

You queue research in the Research Lab on any planet. The time to complete a research item depends on:

1. The item's base research time — set per node; longer for more advanced technologies
2. Your empire's total Research Lab levels — all Research Lab levels across all your planets contribute. Higher total levels means faster research everywhere. The effect is significant but not perfectly linear — spreading Research Labs across multiple planets still pays off substantially.

Early game, research takes minutes to hours. Late-game nodes can take much longer if your Research Lab investment is thin.

Research Queue

Research runs on an empire-wide queue with a handful of slots — one item is actively researching while the rest wait in line, rather than the old one-at-a-time model. This lets you plan several research steps ahead instead of returning to the Research Lab after every single completion.

You can reorder the items still waiting in the queue, moving a lower-priority pick behind a more urgent one without cancelling and re-queuing (which would cost you your place in line and, for some items, re-pay the enqueue cost). The item currently being researched can't be reordered away — only the ones still waiting can swap places. A queued item still needs its prerequisites satisfied (either already unlocked, or itself queued ahead of it), so the queue won't let you build an impossible order.

Levelled Research

Several research nodes are levelled rather than one-shot unlocks: instead of researching them once and being done, you research them repeatedly, and each completed level adds a further increment to the same ongoing bonus. Re-queuing the next level costs more than the last (levelled research gets steadily more expensive the higher you push it), so these act as a long-term investment you can return to at any time rather than a single early-game unlock.

The levelled nodes are:

• Construction Speed: each level shaves a little more off build times empire-wide.
• Electronic Counter-Counter-Measures (ECCM): each level degrades enemy spy-probe accuracy against your holdings. Attackers can compensate by sending more probes.
• Fuel Efficiency: each level trims a little more off the hydrogen your fleets burn in flight, with the cost approaching (but never quite reaching) free travel.
• Logistics Doctrine: each level adds a little more cargo capacity across your hauling fleet.
• Drilling Technology: each level speeds up how fast your mining ships extract from asteroids.
• Garrison Doctrine: each level toughens the droids defending your planets, making a stationed garrison harder to break through.

For most of these, there is no fixed ceiling — the bonus keeps compounding for as long as you keep investing, held in check only by the rising cost of each successive level, not by a hard cap. Treat levelled research as an ongoing sink for spare research capacity rather than something you rush to "finish."

Research Categories

Foundation

The foundation tier holds the research nodes every player wants first: the buildings and starting doctrines that gate everything downstream. Shipyard and Radar research live here, and Garrison Doctrine — the leveled defensive tech above — was moved into this tier too, since it has no prerequisite and benefits every planet from turn one. Every player should unlock Shipyard research as early as possible — without it, no ships can be built anywhere in your empire.

Most early-game research nodes are hydrogen-exempt by design: a brand-new player may not yet have a working Hydrogen Synthesizer, so the earliest unlocks are reachable on metal and carbon alone.

The Tech Tree Beyond Foundation

Past the foundation, research branches out along the same lanes it always has, but the tree was reorganized so that most levelled bonuses now sit behind the ship or building they naturally support, rather than floating as tier-0 roots available to every fresh account. The first combat and utility ships unlock early: the Skiron (your first warship), the Hauler and Colonizer (civilian logistics), and the Spy Probe Espionage chain (which branches off Radar research independently of the combat chain — ECCM sits alongside it). The Colonizer is particularly important — it is the only way to claim new planets.

Deeper in the tree, the Bulk Hauler unlocks high-volume logistics and opens the door to Logistics Doctrine; the Mining Ship unlocks asteroid operations and opens Drilling Technology; the Phalanx, Pythia, and Lynceus round out the mid-game warship and recon options. The highest tiers hold the apex warships — Aegis and Archon — and Fuel Efficiency now sits behind Aegis as a deep-endgame logistics reward rather than an early pick. Research at these levels requires substantial hydrogen alongside metal and carbon.

Research Costs

Research costs Metal, Carbon, and Hydrogen in varying proportions depending on the node. The early-game carve-outs (Shipyard building, Hauler, Bulk Hauler) charge no hydrogen, making them reachable without a developed Hydrogen Synthesizer. From the Mining Ship unlock onward, every research node charges hydrogen — the further along the tree, the larger the hydrogen component tends to be.