Tactics & Strategy | Basic Play Guide | Research & Development

This is where you improve your available technologies and build new equipment; both activities require a lot of resources. Don’t forget that you can pick up equipment for free by destroying the larger enemy ships. At the top of this screen is the progress graph, this gives a rough indication of how long it will be before any research or development projects are finished.

No work can be undertaken without resources and assigned crew to do the job, the more crew you assign the faster the job gets done. Another reason to have a good look around each zone for your missing crew. Don’t worry if you don’t currently have enough resources you can still start work, the project will just stall until you get more supplies.

If you split the crew it is also possible to simultaneously research and build, you can change crew assignments at any time. If a research project finishes before a build project (or vice versa) don’t forget to put the idle crew into the active project to get it finished quicker. If a large project is underway but you need to hang onto your resources for a fight just pause the R+D work, you can resume it later.

When choosing equipment to build or improve always check the descriptive text, you can see how much power it will draw, how massive it is and the arrangement of free hull pods needed to fit it. Is the new item really going to be suitable for your current ships? If you do make something in error then just recycle it back into raw materials.

Don’t get carried away and spend all your resources on items, you must maintain a balance. Neither should you latch onto an item and pour hundreds of resources into it to upgrade it to the max. What good is the most powerful blaster in the game if it is too massive to fit to your hull and it draws so much power you can’t fire it.