The Tech Tree

How research works

The Research Laboratory holds the module tech tree. Each node belongs to a category (Defense, Weapons, Special, Propulsion or Industry) and a tier (1 to 5). To start a node you need:

1. every prerequisite node already researched;
2. the player level for its tier;
3. the resources, which are paid when the research starts.

Browse every node, with its prerequisites and costs, in the Research Tree reference.

What research unlocks

Each node unlocks module blueprints, usually a Ship, a Base and an Outpost version of the same module. You can't manufacture a module in the Forge until its node is researched.

Ship hulls are researched separately, on the BLUEPRINTS tab of the Shipyard.

Your faction's designs

Each faction researches and builds its own designs: its nodes in the Lab, its modules in the Forge and its hulls in the Shipyard. The generic designs are open to every commander. Until you choose a faction, you research and build the generic ones only.

Another faction's designs show as LOCKED, with what opens them:

1. Serve that faction. A faction you leave keeps its designs open to you.
2. Honoured standing with it opens its modules, for 50 blueprint fragments, and Exalted opens its hulls, for 100: press OPEN MODULES or OPEN HULLS on its standing screen. What you open stays open.
3. Hold one of its modules, from a fight's loot: that one module opens to research and build. The other modules of its node stay locked.

Research you did before the lock came on stays yours, and so does what it lets you build. The ships and modules you have stay yours, and fitting is never locked.

The research queue

Research runs one node at a time, first in, first out. Queue more to keep the lab busy. Queue size and research speed grow with your player level: