Research

Description

| Research is essential to the progress of an empire’s technology. An empire must put effort into its research if it wishes to develop new technologies such as advanced weapons, bigger ship sizes, new facilities, and more advanced intelligence projects. Everything that an empire has to use is dictated by its current technology levels. As they increase, newer items will become available. |

Research Elements

| Research Points | An empire’s ability to research technology is represented by the research points that it generates. Each research center that the empire builds on a planet, generates research points for the empire. You can imagine these research facilities as being huge complexes where scientists work on developing the latest technologies. The research points are a quantification of the number of scientists you have to work on research. All they need is to be told what they should be researching. That’s where you come in. You need to tell your scientists what technology areas to research in the Research Window.
| Tech Levels | Your empire spends research points on different technology areas to develop them. Each technology area, is divided into technology levels. These Tech Levels are discrete groupings of achievement in a given area. Each tech level that your empire attains is typically signified by there being new items available for its use. For example, if an empire reaches tech level 2 in Ship Construction, it now has available the ship size Frigate. This means that your ships can now be of a larger size than previously. If your empire reaches tech level 1 in Colonizing Gas Giants, it will have the component Colonization Module - Gas Giant available. You can then design ships using this component and send them to colonize Gas Giant planets.
| Hidden Techs | When you begin a game, there are a large number of technology areas available to research. This list, however, is not complete. There are certain ‘hidden’ tech areas that you cannot research straight off. These ‘hidden’ tech areas are not known to your empire until you reach certain levels in other tech areas. Once your empire has attained the requisite tech levels in certain tech areas, the “hidden” technology area will be available to research.
| Allocating Research | Your empire specifies what technology areas it wants to research in the Research Window. Using this window, you get to add research projects to develop each technology area. You add a research project for tech areas you’re interested in. You will spend your research points each turn in trying to complete each project. When your empire attains a tech level, you will receive a log message reporting the new level.

Special Notes

| You do not accumulate research points over multiple turns. You either use them each turn, or you lose them. There is no conceivable reason why you would not use the Research Window and always have at least one research project going. Technology is the dominant factor in most games, respect it and you may survive. |

Related Areas

| Research Window |