Research & Progression Tree

Research is the permanent-upgrade backbone of the empire. Scientists in your Science Dorms generate Research Points (RP), which you spend to unlock nodes across five branches. Nodes boost existing systems, unlock new ones (stations, buildings, automation), and gate deeper sectors and mega projects. Nothing here resets — every unlock is forever.

Manage it all from the Research panel.

How Research Works #

Generating Research Points #

RP accrue automatically, every tick, from Scientist-class dwarves housed in Science Dorms:

rp/s = Σ over each scientist in a Science Dorm of:
         0.5                              (base rate per scientist)
       × dormLevel
       × (1 + 0.08 × researchStatLevel)  (accommodation training)
       × classFit                        (1.0 Scientist, 0.5 other class)

  × Research Nexus bonus (+40% if a Research Nexus serves the sector)
  × galaxy / artifact researchRate modifiers

So the levers on your RP income are: more scientists, higher Science Dorm level, higher research training stat, a Research Nexus station, and research-boosting galaxy rulesets or artifacts.

Spending: Starting a Node #

To research a node you must meet its prerequisites and afford its cost. A node’s cost is RP + Credits + (sometimes) materials, and the full cost is paid up front when you start it. After that, a wall-clock timer governs completion — research progresses in real time, including while you’re offline.

• A prerequisite counts as met once it has been researched at least once — you don’t have to max a prior node to branch onward.
• Cancelling an in-progress node does not refund resources, but it keeps any stages you’d already completed.

Staged Research #

Most nodes are not a single unlock — they can be researched in up to 5 stages. The values printed in this page are Stage 1 (the base step); each further stage costs more and scales the effect:

Key points:

• Upside grows faster than its matching downside. A mining node’s yield scales to 10× base while its health risk only reaches ~2.6× — so deeper stages are worth it.
• Reductions hit a hard floor of −85%, so cost/timer cuts can never break the economy.
• Pure unlock flags (booleans / station unlocks) are granted once and don’t stage.
• A few nodes carry an explicit stage limit (for example, Automated Habitat Training is single-stage; Automated Trading caps at 5).

Fast-Forwarding Research with Dwarven Montage #

As of v0.15.0, Dwarven Montage minutes — the time-skip resource banked from the Welcome-screen prize wheel — can fast-forward in-progress research nodes, not just expedition timers.

The Research panel header shows your banked balance as 🎬 N min, and every node that is currently researching gains a 🎬 “Use Dwarven Montage” button. Pressing it spends a chunk of your banked minutes to advance that node’s progress, capped by the minutes you have and by the time remaining on the node. When your Montage balance is 0 the button is disabled.

Montage only skips the wait — it never changes the cost. Research Points (and any Credits / materials) are still paid up front when you start the node, exactly as described above; Montage just brings the completion timer forward. It pairs naturally with staged research, where deeper stages carry longer timers.

The Five Branches #

Branches are five tiers deep (Tier 1 = foundational, Tier 5 = endgame). Several Tier-5 nodes require a node from a different branch, weaving the tree together near the top.

Deep Delving (Mining) #

Ancestor Lore (Artifacts) #

See Artifacts & Reliquaries for how slots, forging, and equip scopes work.

Runic Engineering (Stations) #

These nodes feed directly into Stations — both the specialization variants and the Assembly Plant that the Orbital Foundry is built on.

Void Navigation (Expeditions) #

See Expeditions for doctrines, supplies, and concurrent slots.

Guild Administration (Global & Automation) #

This branch drives empire-wide production, the automation ladder, the offline progression cap, and trade.

Notable Nodes #

• Corporate Charter → Resource Priority Framework → … → Full Sector Automation is the automation ladder. Each node unlocks one tier of the Automation & QoL system, gradually removing manual steps without removing decisions.
• Offline progression cap. The base offline cap is 8 hours. Offline Operations Protocol raises it to 24 hours, and Full Sector Automation raises it to the 72-hour hard ceiling. Galaxy Administration Charter further boosts offline income by +25%. These feed the offline catch-up curve described under the core loop.
• Automated Trading sets up standing sell orders executed by the Trade Lodge while you’re away, improving auto-sell efficiency by +8% per stage (up to +40% at max).

Prerequisites & Cross-Branch Links #

The five branches converge at the top. Several high-tier nodes require a node from another branch, so you can’t rush a single branch to its endgame in isolation:

What Research Unlocks Elsewhere #

Strategy Notes #

• Start with the cheap Tier-1 multipliers — Seismic Survey, Dwarven Heritage, Corporate Charter all cost 200 RP and pay off immediately.
• Climb the automation ladder early. It is intentionally front-loaded so old gameplay self-runs while you focus on new content.
• RP is your throttle. Building and training Science Dorms (and adding a Research Nexus) compounds everything else, since every node is bought with RP.
• Stage what you use most. Because upside scales to 10× while downside grows far slower, deep-staging your core mining/production nodes is usually better value than spreading shallow unlocks everywhere.

Balance note: RP costs, material costs, and timings are first-pass values and may change in balance passes.

See also: Stations · Mega Projects · Automation & QoL · Core Loop & Offline Progression