Technology

80 technologies across four branches. Everything below is read straight out of the game, so the costs on this page are the costs you will pay.

Research is a single queue, not four. Whatever you are studying is the only thing being studied, and a point spent on a better reactor is a point not spent on a better gun. The tree is drawn so that everything on one row is something you could begin next.

Defence

Technology	Cost	What it gives you
Marine Doctrine	50	Fighting in a place with no ground to hold and no air to breathe, which is a trade of its own. The Marine Barracks drills it, and everything a Citadel carries in its hangars is commanded from one.
Combat Spacecraft	70	The first warship anybody builds, and the doors to keep it behind. An Interceptor is cheap, quick and barely armoured — it wins by arriving in numbers — and a Hangar Bay is where a Citadel keeps a deck of them. Until you have both, your guns are the only guns you have.
Guided Missiles	110	Unlocks the Planetary Missile Battery and the shipboard Missile Battery: the first real weapon either a world or a hull can carry.
Missile Craft	140	A hull built around its magazine: no armour worth the name, no guns for close work, and a rack of the warheads Guided Missiles taught you to steer. The Missile Cutter shoots across the whole board and is helpless the moment anything reaches it.
Fighter Operations	230	Revetments, launch pits and a fuel farm at the edge of the field, and the ground crews to turn them round between sorties. Fighter Berths are the cheap way a colony grows a fleet, built as many times as there is room for them.
Heavy Hulls	500	Armour thick enough to be worth the mass, and a reactor big enough to push it. The Dreadnought is slow, close-range and very hard to kill — the thing a line forms around once the cutters have shot their racks dry.
Ion Weapons	500	The drive coil turned outward. An Ion Cannon hits for less than a missile rack and goes through a shield as though it were not there — the answer to anything that has learned to stop ordnance.
Deflector Fields	500	Unlocks the Shield Generator and the Planetary Shield: damage is absorbed by a pool that recharges between volleys instead of eating your hull.
Fleet Ordnance	600	An Ordnance Bay in the Citadel, and every Interceptor and Dreadnought that comes through it leaves with ion guns off the ship's own racks instead of whatever it was built with. One point of attack on each, for as long as the bay is aboard.
Flag Command	700	A Flag Bridge: a plot table, repeaters and somebody whose whole job is the shape of the engagement. A fleet directed from one deploys across two columns instead of one, and in seven groups instead of five — which is the difference between a line and a heap.
Fleet Screens	1000	A Screen Projector throws its field over the whole formation rather than over the hull carrying it: every ship of yours on the board fights a point harder to kill. It eats power like nothing else aboard, and a Citadel running one has to be built around it.
Warp Lances	1000	A drive small enough for one warship and exact enough to put it where the enemy is not looking. The Warp Lancer ignores the board between it and its target, which is the whole of what it is for.
Phase Weapons	1400	Field physics turned outward. Phase Coils in the Citadel re-gun every warship under it, not the two classes an Ordnance Bay can reach: one point of attack across the whole fleet, for ever.
Phase Turrets	1400	The same coils planted in the ground and left pointing upward. A Phase Turret fires from a world's own edge of the board — 22 damage at short reach, as often as anything comes near.
Shaped Warheads	1400	Nothing to build and nothing to fit: a warhead that puts its energy in one direction instead of all of them. Every missile you own hits for two more — Missile Cutters, Missile Batteries and Torpedo Beds alike, everywhere, for ever.
Plasma Ordnance	1600	Only a Dreadnought has the mass to carry a plasma gun and the reactor to feed it. Plasma Chambers aboard the Citadel put two points of attack on every Dreadnought in the fleet and nothing at all on anything lighter — a line for somebody who has decided what their fleet is.
Siege Guns	1600	A barrel big enough to reach the far edge of the board and a magazine holding three rounds. The Siege Battery shells a fleet while it is still forming up, which is the one moment a fleet cannot shoot back.
Salvo Racks	1600	Deeper magazines and a faster feed. Everything that shoots across the board carries two more salvoes before it runs dry — and a Missile Cutter that still has rounds when the enemy closes is a different ship from one that does not.
Screen Harmonics	1700	Tuning rather than building: every shield you already have runs a point harder, from a Shield Generator on a hull to a Planetary Shield over a world. Nothing to fit and nothing to power.
Particle Weapons	1900	Not force but precision: a beam thin enough to find the seam. Particle Lances count every enemy a point less defended than they are, which is worth most against exactly the ships that were hardest to hurt.
Point Defence	1900	Small guns, pointed everywhere, firing at things too fast to see. A Point Defence Net halves every salvo that crosses the board at this world. It cannot hurt a warship and does not try.
Shield Capacitors	1900	Storage enough to hold the screen out a full column further than it could reach on its own. Everything of theirs spends one more round under your fire before it is inside the field, and everything of yours spends one less under theirs.
Plasma Warheads	2200	A warhead that arrives as a plasma front rather than as a solid thing, and a screen has nothing to catch. Your missiles cross an enemy shield as though it were not there — the answer to a fleet that has spent its whole tree on screens.
Regenerative Screens	2400	A field that rebuilds itself between one round and the next. Shields no longer simply wear down: whatever got through last round has to get through again, and a long engagement stops being a losing one.

Habitation

Technology	Cost	What it gives you
Astro University	10	Somewhere to write it all down and somewhere to teach it. The first building of a civilisation that means to leave its own sky, and the one that makes every trade after it teachable.
Civil Engineering	10	Drains, foundations, a street plan and roofs that stay on. The Township is the first thing a people builds that is a place rather than a shelter, and on kind ground it is all most places ever need.
Life in Space	25	Air, water, warmth and the machinery that keeps all three going where none of them occur. Life Support for a hull and a Space Outpost for one pair of hands on a rock that would kill them — which is a question of plumbing and drains and roofs that stay on, learned on the ground long before anybody needed it anywhere else.
Command and Control	30	Watch rosters, a purser's ledger and somebody with the authority to settle an argument at the wrong end of a long voyage. The Command Office: a crowd in a sealed hull needs governing as much as it needs air.
Hydroponics	40	Unlocks the Hydroponic Farm on worlds and the Hydroponics module aboard ships: 6 Food from a sealed rack — nine with an Agronomist — the same on bare rock, in orbit, or on good soil. It is how a hull feeds itself, and it lets an ordinary Farm work thin ground it would otherwise refuse.
Sealed Habitation	80	Sealing a place rather than a person. A Habitat Block puts three where an Outpost put one, on the same single tile of ground — so a rock you were working with a scatter of huts becomes somewhere a colony can actually stand. Ground is the thing you run out of, and this is what buys it back.
Cryogenics	100	Cold sleep. A Cryo Berth holds one colonist frozen: they eat nothing, breathe nothing and draw no power, and the berth carries its own life support while they are under. A hull full of berths is a colony in transit rather than a crew you have to feed all the way there.
Civic Order	120	Courts, clerks and a written grievance. Order may hold six tenths of what the crowd is doing to a place instead of a half — and a Courthouse is the thing that does the holding, built as many times as the world needs rather than once.
Soil Science	180	What the ground is short of, and how to put it back. A Fertiliser Plant lifts every field on the world by a quarter — soil only, never a tank — so a planet with weather feeds more people than a hull ever will.
Simulation Training	200	A rig that can be made to fail on purpose, and a student allowed to fail on it. Teaching a trade by lecture alone takes the better part of a lifetime; a Simulator Hall beside the Astro University puts a qualified Engineer out every few turns instead.
Public Broadcasting	220	One voice every roof can hear. A Broadcast Hub keeps order in proportion to how many there are to keep — half a point a head — so it is the one civil building a growing world does not outgrow. The same racked into a berth answers for a Citadel's decks.
Hostile Environment Seals	260	Toxic Flats and Volcanic Waste stop being off limits: you can put a facility on them, and the Pop working it survives.
Habitat Dome	320	Unlocks the Habitat Dome: one shell over a whole district on ground that would kill anybody under open sky, housing ten. It can only be raised where the ground is already sealed — as many Life Support Facilities standing on that world as the place is deadly.
Broad-Spectrum Medicine	400	Nothing to build and nothing to staff: a body of practice that travels with your people wherever they settle. A birth takes a tenth less out of the larder, everywhere, for ever — the granaries keep three fifths of themselves instead of half.
Arcology Construction	600	Unlocks the Metroplex: twelve Pops housed on ground they can already breathe on, for 6 Energy and nobody to run it. Only on a benign world — a sealed one has nothing to build a city out in.
Rule of Law	700	The same law for everybody, written down, and somebody obliged to follow it. Order may hold seven tenths of the crowd's pressure; a Penal Block holds two convicts rather than one, and rehabilitates them twice as fast. Nothing to build — it is true the moment it is known.
Planetary Engineering	800	Unlocks the Climate Engine: while it runs, a world counts as one step less hostile than it is. It will not make a lethal world benign on its own — that is four engines' worth of work and four worlds' worth of power — but it turns a place you garrison into a place you live.
Civic Networks	900	Every office, court and transmitter an empire has, working off one another. Order may hold eight tenths of what the crowd is doing — the most it will ever hold, and the difference between a world of forty and a world of fifty-five.
Habitat Rings	1000	A ring turned for its own gravity, with soil in the floor of it. The Habitat Ring houses more people in one berth than anything else ever built, and it does it in orbit, where there is no weather to argue with.

Industry

Technology	Cost	What it gives you
Spaceport	10	A field, a tower and the traffic discipline to use them. Nothing leaves the ground without one and nothing lands, so it is the first thing anybody builds and the thing every other launch waits on.
Solar Energy	10	Panels that make current out of daylight — laid out in fields on the ground, and folded onto anything you send up. Free power wherever the sun reaches, and nothing at all where it does not.
Space Structures	20	Pressure hulls, frames that hold their shape in vacuum, and a thruster to shift them with. The Core Module and the Chemical Thruster: between them, the first thing of yours that is a place rather than a payload.
Combustion Power	20	Burning something in a box is the oldest trick there is; burning it in a box you have lifted off a launch field, in a hull with nowhere for the exhaust to go, is a different problem. The Combustion Reactor is what keeps the lights on where the sun will not — out past the planets, in an eclipse, and on every night shift of a long crossing.
Working in Space	30	Doing a day's work with nothing underfoot. A Workshop that builds in vacuum and a Cargo Hold to carry what it builds with — the difference between visiting orbit and earning a living there.
Orbital Logistics	50	Lighters, cranes and a loading schedule. Unlocks the Logistics Centre and its shipboard Logistics Bay: work ferried in from elsewhere in the sector lands at 75% instead of 50%, on whichever body has one.
Power Beaming	100	A tight microwave link between a hull in orbit and a dish on the ground. Fit a Power Relay to a ship and raise a Rectenna Field below it: the ship spends 12 Energy and the ground gets 11 back — just enough to hold a sealed hut and work a seam on a dead asteroid. One dish serves a whole sector, and it goes dark the moment the ship leaves. A barren moon needs no reactor of its own — it needs somebody willing to park over it.
Vacuum Excavation	120	Cutting and working hard rock in vacuum. Asteroids can be developed at all, Chasm hexes stop being off limits, and the heavier industry beyond needs it first.
Material Reclamation	120	Dismantling gives back 70% of what a structure cost instead of half, so rebuilding a habitat around a new plan stops being wasteful.
Computation	140	Machines that do the arithmetic, and somewhere cold to keep them. A Databank files what every laboratory under it has found and hands back the cross-references nobody had time to look for — a quarter again as much out of the same scientists, and it needs nobody sitting at it.
Fission Power	140	Unlocks the Fission Reactor on worlds and aboard ships: 34 Energy from one hex — half as much again as a Combustion Plant — on a thin trickle of Minerals for fuel.
Ore Refining	250	Taking the rock out of the ore before anybody counts it. A Purification Plant puts a quarter again on everything this world's mines send up, from the same seams and the same miners.
Orbital Fabrication	280	Presses and a rolling mill in a berth, and room to turn a girder end for end. The Fabrication Bay sits where a Citadel spends most of its life: twice what a Workshop makes, and half of what a Zero-G Foundry will, once you can afford one.
Industrial Automation	300	Line robots and a parts store that reorders itself. An Automated Factory adds a quarter to everything a world or a Citadel builds, and asks for nobody to run it — which in a colony short of trained hands is worth more than the quarter.
Grid Optimisation	300	Superconducting trunk and switchgear that sees the load coming. A Grid Optimiser takes a tenth off every draw aboard a Citadel — the cheapest reactor anybody ever built is the one they did not have to.
Fusion Power	420	Unlocks the Fusion Reactor on worlds and aboard ships: 58 Energy from one hex, near enough twice a Fission Reactor, and no fuel to carry at all.
Synthetic Labour	450	A worker built rather than born. An Android runs a farm or a works at 130% and will do nothing else: no laboratory, no desk, no drill yard. It eats nothing, draws a point of the grid instead, needs no habitation however hostile the ground, and neither feels unrest nor causes any.
Deep Core Extraction	500	Unlocks the Deep Core Shaft: 9 Minerals from a seam a Mine takes 4 out of, for three times the power. It goes down where a Mine has already proved the surface.
Megafacility Engineering	600	Unlocks the Industrial Megafacility: 18 Production from a single hex, more than twice a Factory, for three times the power draw. The best a world can do with one hex; a Zero-G Foundry in orbit does better.
Orbital Yards	700	Docking arms and a repair slip hung over a world. An Orbital Yard adds berths above a planet on top of whatever the ground itself can hold — the difference between a colony that keeps a fleet and one that keeps a patrol.
Zero-G Manufacturing	700	Unlocks the Zero-G Foundry: 21 Production from one hull compartment, three times a Workshop and more than any single hex on any world — heavy work is easier where nothing weighs anything. Until it is done a vessel builds at the pace of its Workshops.
Singularity Containment	1300	Unlocks the Singularity Tap and the shipboard Singularity Core: 70–100 Energy from one hex, and the end of power as a constraint.

Spaceflight

Technology	Cost	What it gives you
Space Exploration	25	Instruments carried rather than pointed: a Laboratory that goes with the ship and a Sensor Array to find out what is worth travelling to. Anyone can run a laboratory on the ground; the trick is doing the same work under way.
Advanced Surveying	50	Better optics, and the practice of pointing them at one thing until it gives something up. Surveys run half again as fast, and it unlocks the Observatory Array — the same long glasses a groundside dome uses, carried above the air where they are worth more than twice as much.
Warp Theory	80	Unlocks the Warp Drive, and with it the rest of the galaxy. Until it is done a civilisation is confined to its own star.
Automated Telemetry	90	Instruments that keep their own log and report it without anybody reading the dials. A Telemetry Post studies the ground it stands on for two Research a turn — no crew, a little power, and one to a body.
Deep Sensors	200	Phased arrays, and optics that work better with no air in front of them. Unlocks the Deep Sensor Array — twice the reach, twice the survey rate, and a return good enough to count a rival's hulls instead of guessing at them —.
Ion Propulsion	400	Unlocks the Ion Drive: 40 thrust for 12 mass, where a Chemical Thruster gives 14 for 10. The first engine that will move a real ship on its own.
Compression Fields	800	Unlocks the Compression Drive: interstellar crossings two thirds again as quick, for half again the power.
Fleet Logistics	800	Unlocks the Carrier Deck: sixty berths in one hull compartment, three times a Hangar Bay, so a flagship can carry a fleet worth the name.
Fusion Propulsion	1000	Unlocks the Fusion Torch: 70 thrust for 15 mass, the first engine that moves a heavy hull without a row of them.
Antimatter Drives	1200	Unlocks the Antimatter Drive: 110 thrust from a small, well-shielded nozzle, and a very bad day if it is ever hit.
Applied Gravitics	2000	Unlocks the Gravitic Impeller: 170 thrust with no exhaust and no need to face open space, for hulls of any weight.
Space Folding	2600	Unlocks the Fold Engine: the fastest crossing there is, and the most expensive hull fitting in the game to run.