Last Updated: Year 25 Day 170
Research involves the discovery of new and exciting technologies.
Each faction type has access to its own tech tree. The kind of technology that can be found within these tech trees are generally specific to the faction type.
As with any tree, technology within a tech tree must be unlocked sequentially. You can not unlock technology that you do not have the preceding tecchnology for.
A player will not know what technology is that they are able to unlock, until they've unlocked it. However, a player can guess at the kind of technology based on the points cost.
Example
A ship with better engines will cost more in engines research.
There are two different types of technologies on the tech tree. Stock technology and variant technology.
Unique technologies involves a higher point cost but will unlock a new type of entity, while a variant technology will, for a smaller point cost,
unlock a variant of an entity you already have.
Example
Stock Entity: CR-90 Corvette
Variant Entity: CR-90 Corvette with 2 Extra Heavy Lasers
Variants allow for more product choice with your customers as well as for your own fleets, so while they may not be as interesting as new technology, for a smaller point cost
they can allow you to differentiate your fleet.
A player can concentrate on one type of research at a time. A successful research job will result in points
being awarded for the selected research pool.
Hull Research involves the researching of stronger ships, bigger space stations and better facilities. Hull research
points are therefore related to the amount of damage an entity can take.
Electronics Research involves researching things like better shields, sensors or ECMs. The more Electronic research
an entity requires, the better its electronics must be.
Weapons Research involves sticking more exploding things onto your ride. Having to spend a lot of points in Weapons research
means that your entity will either have more or better armaments.
Engines Research involves speed. The more points you have to spend in Engines research, the faster your entity will be, either in
regular engines, sublight drives, or hyperdrives.
Example
Unlocking the YT-1300 might cost 500 Hull Points, 100 Weapons Points and 600 Engine Points.
There are three steps to attaining research points.
In order to be able to conduct research and record the results of any successful research action, a player must first add a datapad
to the station. Once a datapad has been added, research can begin.
The player must complete the following steps to start research
- Select the number of NPCs that they wish to take part in the research project
- Select the research pool that they wish to research in
- Start Research
It takes one month to complete a research action, with points being awarded based on factors such as skill, literacy level and pure chance.
Once research has been complete, any points awarded will be added to the stored Schematic. If the datapad is reused in a new research project, any previous research will be wiped from the card.
Important
The research points belong to whomever has access to the datapad who will not always be the owner of the datapad...