Fields of Study

More about Research

Playing Stars!

There are six fields of study: Energy, Weapons, Propulsion, Construction, Electronics, and Biotechnology. You can research only one at a time. The levels of proficiency range from 0 to 26 (at 26, you are a techno-geek summa cum astrolabe, a level that 20th century hi-tech moguls can only daydream about reaching). When you complete a research level, new technology becomes available to you.

Going beyond the level needed to produce an item has cost benefits: for every technology level you achieve above the required level, the production cost of that item is reduced by 5%. You can eventually reduce the production costs for many items by 75%. This is also referred to as miniaturization.

The type of research needed to gain a technology depends on the function of that technology. For example, most ship hulls require Construction research only. Some technology requires research into more than one area: Gravity Terraforming requires research in both Biotechnology and Propulsion.

Use the Research dialog to specify a field of study and the percentage of resources you wish to apply annually to that research. The dialog also displays the specific technology you'll gain by achieving the next few levels in that field. Resources applied to research are taken off the top of your resource heap. This allocation is modified only if you check Contribute only leftover resources to research in the Production dialog, which reverses the order, allocating resources to production first, then research.

You can change research fields before achieving a new level. Stars! keeps track of how much progress you've made in a field, allowing you to return to a partially researched field at any time without losing progress.

Choosing the Next Field of Study

You can queue your next field of interest using the Next Field to Research dropdown in the Research dialog. This switches your research as soon as you reach the next level in your current field. All resources not needed to reach the next level in your current field are applied to the next field.

If you achieve the maximum level for a field and forget to specify a new field, Stars! automatically selects the least researched field.