Science is the process by which new blueprints are created.

Research can be immensely rewarding and is essential to advancing the game. Try it, experiment, and enjoy.


To do science, you need to do two things to start:

* Hire scientists at one or more colonies
* Build or construct a Research Lab

Note: You must have have a research lab at the same colony as the scientists with whom you will be using for doing research. Once you select a lab to use, only scientists at that colony are available for research.

After selecting a research lab, select the type of research project you wish to research.

Enter the research budget you wish to use.
Note: The suggested budget is a balance between estimated project duration and the quality of the result. A higher budget may well be beneficial, but prolong the project.


The next step is to select the scientists you wish to use. Each scientist has scores in a number of skills. See Scientist for more info.

A research lab has a fixed maximum number of scientists that it can employ to do the research. For example, the starter garage lab structure, let's you add 1 or 2 scientist to the project but no more. Later research labs will add more scientists as the power of your research teams increase. To add a scientist, simply click the button to the left of the scientist name.

Once you have added the desired number of researchers to the project press the start button and hurry up and wait.

The stats of the print are determined by the skills of the scientists involved in the research. Each project uses different skills for different stats. The final values are modified by budget, colony index (if applicable), RNG, and a possible bonus from ingenuity if you're lucky enough to roll a success on that.

Scientist level up their skills at the end of projects through conversations with other scientist. Depending on the type and ratios of skills needed for a blueprint. The number of scientists on the team, each scientist can potentially increase their skills. The longer a project runs, the more conversations occur and thus likely more skill level ups.

Research run times show three values: current, best effort, and deadline. Current shows you how many game days the project has been running. Best effort is the median duration. The deadline specifies the longest a project can run before completing.


* Researching is expensive, particularly at the start of a round, so if you are serious about researching you will have to accept that it will consume most of your credits and resources. Cooperate with your empire/faction or buy prints on the blueprint market so you don't have to research everything yourself.
* Scientist salaries are very expensive so do not hire a lot of scientists without adequate income. Hiring them on high tech colonies will make them demand less compensation in monetary terms, allowing you to hire more for less.
* It is generally not worth using budgets of more than 10x the estimated. Early game budgets should be kept low, especially when you're training your scientists.
* A colony's high tech index can influence how long a project runs, how much the scientists demand in salary, and how much they learn. Over 100% will generally reduce the time a project will run. The other 3 indexes have a slight impact on the quality of researched prints that have the same theme as the index. Urban -> facilities, Industry -> industry buildings, Military -> hulls.
* Scientists age in game years and have a chance of dying after age 55, scaling with their age. If a scientist dies while working on a project, the project will still finish but without that scientist's contribution or conversations.
* Scientists can be transferred from one colony to another for a price thus allowing grouping of scientists to run on particular colonies. In the early game this price hits hard as your income is still very limited.
* Scientists will occasionally demand raises after a project runs. If you don't agree you can always fire the scientist.
* Hybrid blueprints occur at higher levels of ingenuity. Blueprint groups that can have hybrids are facilities, mines, and ship hulls. Hybrids will only use other blueprint types within the same blueprint group (example hulls). So you can get fighter/ bomber hybrids, police station/academy hybrids as examples.
* If you destroy a research lab while a project is running it will cancel the project and you still lose your investment of time and credits.

Aegis/Taikon