stellaris research agreement

Stellaris – Technology Guide: All You Need to Know

• Post author: Simon Neve
• Post category: Stellaris
• Post last modified: October 31, 2023

There is every chance that this guide could be the most valuable piece of content you ever read about Stellaris. Technology is king in Stellaris, and the key to ascending from an average player to a great player comes from using the tech system to your advantage.

Stellaris is about creating a cool space empire that creates marvels of engineering that, to us, may as well be magic. To create that amazing technology, your scientists will first need to research it.

Recommended Read: How to Build an Orbital Ring in Stellaris

If you neglect your empire’s technology advancement, it will not take long for your neighbors to overtake you. When they do that, it is only a matter of time before their superior weaponry becomes your biggest problem.

This guide is going to teach you everything you could ever want to know about how technology and research work in Stellaris.

Good technology is the most important key to victory in Stellaris. Your scientists spend your empire’s research points on new technology projects. After you spend enough research points, you unlock that technology, and your scientist can move on to the next project.

Table of Contents

Technology introduction, what is technology and research in stellaris, research alternatives, what do research points do, what technology should you research.

“Tech rush,” “prioritize research,” “out-tech them”; these are terms you may read if you ever browse a Stellaris forum.

They more or less mean the same thing, having great technology is one of the most effective strategies to winning Stellaris.

Getting ahead in the technological cold war is the most effective strategy to boost your empire in Stellaris.

Having a booming economy is great, but if you can only equip your ships with pea shooters and your enemy has massive lasers, who is winning that fight?

Technology is the answer to almost every problem that can crop up in the game: it improves your economy, combat effectiveness, pop growth, pop happiness, allows terraforming, unlocks new ships, helps you make allies, better weapons, and anything else you can think of.

If you have a problem, there is, without a doubt, a research project that can help.

At its core, the research system is simple: the game offers you some projects, you select one, your scientists research it, you unlock the tech, and then pick another one.

Under the hood of that basic mechanic, there is a lot going on. It does involve some complicated background math and a random draw element.

Don’t worry. You don’t need to understand the math to become efficient with this system and isn’t covered in this guide.

Technology is the catch-all term used for all the projects you unlock in the game.

From basic weapons all the way to gargantuan megastructures. Technology is then split into three different research fields.

These fields are: Physics Research, Society Research, and Engineering Research. These three fields are split into a further 13 sub-categories as follows:

• Computing: These unlock point defense systems, science ship upgrades, ship computers, new science labs, and improve research speed
• Field Manipulation: Technologies in this field involve shields, power production, and strategic resources
• Particles: Ship power systems, energy weaponry, strategic resources, and jump drives rely on particle research
• Military Theory: More ship capacity, extra fleet command, bigger armies, military upgrades, and claim upgrades all stem from this field
• New Worlds: Speaks for itself but tile clearance, terraforming of planets, and improvements to habitability come from this research branch
• Biology: If you want longer living leaders, more food, new army types, and ways to modify your species; biology projects are the place to go
• Statecraft: improves edicts, unity production, better leader recruitment, and improves interactions with other space empires
• Psionics: A very niche field, only unlocked through your species unlocking their psionic potential
• Archaeostudies: All about the minor artifacts system, and the use of archaeo research technology projects
• Voidcraft: You want the biggest and best ships right? Voidcraft is where you find them, as well as starbase upgrades and hull technology
• Materials: Armor and resource boons are yours for the taking, whenever you commit your research to this field of study
• Industry: This section is for mineral production, resource storage, robot building, and unlocking new planetary buildings
• Propulsion: New engines for your ships, and exotic weapon types become available to you when you work on propulsion projects

How the Game Allocates Technology Projects

Stellaris forgoes a linear tech tree system, for what it calls the card system. To understand it, you need to use your imagination a bit.

Think of every single technology project in the game as a playing card. Every technology your empire can begin researching, gets referred to as the technology deck.

So the “deck” is all possible projects, and a “card” is one individual project.

When it comes time to select a card, the game shuffles the deck and deals you three cards.

You select one of these, and when your scientists finish the work, the game deals you three new cards to pick from.

Please bear in mind, the deck is invisible to players, and there is no way to inspect what cards are in there.

Simple enough so far? Well, it gets more complicated from here on out.

Every card has a tier allocated to it, from zero to five. The higher the tier, the higher the cost and the more advanced the technology is.

At the start of the game, you will only have access to tier zero and tier one technology cards.

To unlock the next tier, you need to unlock six technologies from the tier that comes before it.

This means to get tier two cards, you first need to research six different tier one cards. This pattern continues for all later tiers.

Once you do that, all the tier two technologies that you meet the prerequisites for get added to the technology deck as potential draws.

But wait, there’s more. The chance of drawing a specific card is not equal. The game uses something called the weighting system.

This system gives makes it more likely that certain cards appear and decreases the chance of others.

Weight depends on a lot of factors: ethics, whether the card has already appeared before, if your allies have the technology unlocked, the tier of the card, whether the technology is rare, and scientist traits.

By default, whenever you receive your hand of cards to pick from, you only get three cards.

You can increase that amount by +1 with the following sources:

• Self Evolving Logic technology
• Technocracy civic
• Natural Neural Network civic
• Static Research Analysis civic
• Science Division tradition
• Mindlink tradition
• Research Path Optimization tradition
• Ruler having the Erudite trait
• Settled Differences empire modifier

You will not be able to have all these for your empire because these options are not available to everyone.

It is not uncommon by the end of the game to have around three of these. Meaning every time you select a research project, you enjoy three extra cards to choose from, for a total of six.

There is one final way to obtain research alternatives, named the permanent alternatives. These appear below the hand of cards dealt to you.

You can tell they are permanent because they have a golden border, and the project will already be partially completed.

These permanent alternatives come from scanning space debris, special projects, or in-game events.

They will always be available on top of the normal research alternatives dealt to you. This could result in you having many research projects to choose from, well over your research alternatives cap.

With that explained, it is time to learn how the technology gets researched.

The short version is: the more research points you have, the faster you can research technology. A more detailed explanation than that is as follows.

Your scientists will spend all the available research points on the technology they are researching. Research points are separated into the three fields of research: Engineering, Society, and Physics.

You can see your monthly research production at the top of the interface by highlighting the picture of a microscope.

You can use this number to work out how long a project will take. Every project has a research cost.

Let’s say you have a technology that costs 2000 engineering research. Also, your empire produces 100 engineering research a month.

If you take the cost and divide it by the monthly research production, it will give a pretty decent estimate of how long the project will take.

In this case, it is 2000 ÷ 100 = 20. So that project would take around 20 months to complete.

The cost for the technology goes up the higher the tier, and it scales with empire size.

You can get more research points from the following sources:

• Researcher jobs on planets
• Building research stations in space
• Stacking research speed bonuses e.g. edicts, scientist traits, or the curator enclave deal
• Entering into Research agreements with other empires
• Scanning debris after space battles

The one million energy credit question that everyone wants to know. What are the best technologies to research in Stellaris?

The easy answer would be whatever your empire needs at the time to overcome its current challenges.

Due to the semi-random nature of Stellaris’s technology tree, this advice is pretty rubbish.

If you follow five key principles for selecting a research project, you will not be far off from taking the optimal path.

Rule Number One – Read the Damn Tech Card

Research is king in Stellaris, and being competent with the research system will make you a good player.

The path to true greatness relies on the player’s ability to read the information the game gives them.

Seriously, if you take the time and read what the game puts in front of you, your power level in this game becomes limitless.

Instead of looking at the name and picture of the project, learn what it does and see if it is useful to you.

For example, let’s pretend the game offers you x-ray lasers as a research project. Man, don’t those sound cool? Your ships would be awesome with those on. Wrong, your enemy uses a lot of shields, and lasers do reduced damage to shields.

Researching these projects now could tie up your scientist for years. The game has a pause function. Use it and take time to make the correct choices.

Rule Number Two – Research Research

There are loads of research projects that provide bonuses to specific game mechanics. There are ones that increase ship fire rate, mining production, ship speed, etc.

The most valuable of these are research projects that increase your research speed. The earlier you can get these, the better.

Some of these provide very generous modifiers, and the sooner you can make use of them, the better.

Over a full game, these research projects could save your researchers decades of work. What is even better, as the game proceeds, the value of these technologies increases with your research production.

If increasing your research speed is ever presented to you, it should be high on your target list.

Rule Number Three – If All Options Suck, Take the Cheapest

There are a lot of winner technologies in the game. The problem is there are a lot of losers out there as well.

At one point in your Stellaris career, the game is going to present you with nothing but rubbish. It is rare, but it does happen, but there is one thing you can do to help.

Earlier in the guide, we discussed that when a project is complete, the game reshuffles the deck and deals you some new cards to choose from.

Well, you need to get that to happen as soon as possible. You do that by picking the subpar technology that has the lowest cost.

It does suck to have to lose time on research. Excuse the pun here, but you have to play the hand you are dealt. Picking the cheapest project could get you back on track, potentially years before picking a more expensive option.

Rule Number Four – If it is Rare, Pick it

Rare technologies are the best ones in the game. They are the key to megastructures, super bonuses, powerful weaponry, and all the other cool stuff you want.

While they are all not S-tier technologies, a good rule of thumb is that they are probably better than your other choices.

But, if you are applying rule number one, then you will know when to not apply this rule.

This rule is very vital earlier in the game. If you are lucky enough to receive rare technology early, you need to pounce on that and start reaping the rewards.

You will know a rare technology, as the card display will have a purple border.

Rule Number Five – Avoid Repeatable Technologies Until you Have no Choice

Toward the end of the game, the game will begin presenting you with repeatable technology projects.

These are expensive, provide a minor benefit, and can be repeated infinitely. These techs are great when you have no other choice but to take them.

They become so expensive and lock up your resource points for long periods of time. This time could be better used for the final weapons upgrades your ships need or unlocking a super powerful megastructure.

Do yourself a favor and save the repeatable technologies for when you have finished all the other research projects.

These techs signify the end of research being something to worry about. Set your scientists to auto-research, and let them work at these until the game ends.

This is everything you need to know about technology in Stellaris.

As mentioned at the beginning, this guide is one of the most important ones you will ever read. So please, take extra time to digest the information contained within.

We encourage you to ask questions and make suggestions in the comments section as well. As always, have fun researching all the best technology in Stellaris.

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Should the +20% Research from Jobs techs be changed to +25% Research Bonus from Research Agreements?

• Thread starter DeanTheDull
• Start date Aug 30, 2023

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Abdulijubjub

Field marshal.

• Aug 31, 2023
• Add bookmark

z3rO_ said: I think that they should be the two parallel ways to develop, considering the different axis. Although all the ways that unity could help develop an empire differently were either nerfed or never cooked completely. And the last ascension perk shouldn't be locked behind tech also. That's kinda dumb. Click to expand...

currylambchop

Star eater gang (she/her).

I agree with removing the techs but not with replacing them with useless filler techs that will just clutter the tech tree  

Critical Ethics

Abdulijubjub said: These techs could be interesting. The way the tech tree is designed, it seems like they were intended to be a "unlock the next tier of stuff" type tech, with a tech bonus to make it eventually pay for itself. But the catch-up bonus is so strong that you want them just the bonus's sake, and the role of gatekeeping just never comes into play. So simply nerfing them (even making them dead nodes) may be enough to make them strategically interesting again. Click to expand...

GloatingSwine said: Research wasn't even the focus of Stellaris until 2.0. Before that it was all about minerals. Click to expand...

DreadLindwyrm

Augustus of the north.

One problem with changing "research from jobs" to "research from agreements" is that it's a dead tech for anyone that can't make research agreements. If you're not in contact with anyone who can make a research agreement (say you're bottled up behind an FE and a couple of marauders or have only encountered genocidals), then the tech becomes worthless. If you're a genocidal yourself, then it's also worseless. If you're in a small multiplayer game and the other player doesn't want to sign research agreements it might also be useless to you, depending on the number of AI. The techs have to work for everyone.  

Critical Ethics said: but upgrading buildings was mad tedious, which was bad Click to expand...

Ashanti Globetrotter

DreadLindwyrm said: The techs have to work for everyone. Click to expand...

Starfury said: Do they? They can just be removed for genocidals. They can also have a weight of 0 if you've not met another empire. Click to expand...

Maybe unlock a few new treaty booster techs by completing Diplomacy. That's a cool idea. But IMHO that's separate and shouldn't be considered a replacement for the +20% direct boost techs, which can be removed immediately.  

Abdulijubjub said: I still maintain that they could be strategically interesting even if they were literally dead nodes. The "dead tech which unlocks a bunch of cool, new, powerful tech of a new tier" thing is in a lot of games, and it works well as an investment that requires you to forgo immediately useful things for long term benefit. They would have to be more integrated into the tree, though. Currently the Society one gates nothing, Engineering only gates Assembly Patterns, and Physics only gates the espionage (encryption/codebreaking) techs. None of which really matter. Just removing it from the tree or setting drop rate to 0 doesn't quite work for the few techs that are gated by it, though. Click to expand...

GloatingSwine

Critical Ethics said: In the pre-jobs system almost all production output boosts were due to researching better buildings which you then built over your old buildings. There was both a research gate and a minerals gate, which was good, but upgrading buildings was mad tedious, which was bad. When things moved to jobs there was a (good, smart) move to reduce this micro through a combination of one-per-planet buildings and passive efficiency boosts, but that removed the minerals gate from much of the boosts. That's fine for most things but I think the mistake was not realising that scientist job efficiency boosts maybe should have been the exception to this and gotten additional gating somehow. Also in the pre-jobs system research improvements didn't really compound. You could only improve one kind of research per building, so only researching the green research buildings didn't net you any less total research than researching all three colours. Adjacency bonuses also meant that bonuses from the science booster building were limited. Research was still very important but research without minerals was pointless and it's much easier under the new system for science bonuses to rapidly compound. Click to expand...

FleetingRain

Dunno about the replacement but we could just remove those +% techs, yeah.  

First Lieutenant

Hurting Genocidal builds is a bad thing, builds that can't assimilate pops are already some of the worst in the game outside of extremely sweaty MP metas (where they are banned anyway). +20% for each tech also seems too powerful of a bonus to empires that do diplomacy. Maybe +10%? IMO the resource techs could do with a bit of a nerf. Right now the % of your economy involved in producing basic resources drops like a rock by the midgame to the point where you only need a single mining/food/energy world to supply a dozen city worlds. Should be the opposite, with megastructures like matter decompressor being what lets you urbanize huge swathes of planets.  

• Sep 1, 2023

btw, remember that the way that research agreements currently work, you get the bonus if you're researching a repeatable as long as one of your friends has a repeatable too, even if you're way ahead of them in the level of repeatable. It's already brokenly strong with the research cooperative federation and if you add this one then its another huge buff to late game research. That little "feature" needs to be fixed.  

Sweeze said: btw, remember that the way that research agreements currently work, you get the bonus if you're researching a repeatable as long as one of your friends has a repeatable too, even if you're way ahead of them in the level of repeatable. It's already brokenly strong with the research cooperative federation and if you add this one then its another huge buff to late game research. That little "feature" needs to be fixed. Click to expand...

Somebody248

Second lieutenant.

Locking the ability to catch up faster on research behind research itself seems like a bad idea. It would mean that empires who are significantly behind on tech would catch up slower, which is the opposite of how it should work. These research agreement techs would also become potentially harmful to whoever has a tech lead. If you don't have a research partner with about the same tech level, the only discounts you'll get (aside from repeatable cheese) are going to be on cheap techs that you skipped, so there won't be much benefit to improving those discounts. On the other hand, if the tech leader does research those techs, they become much cheaper for anyone with a research agreement. So, if you want to keep your lead, you could skip those techs and let anyone trying to catch up pay full price for a tech you got to skip. If you really want to increase the effectiveness of research agreements, a better place for it would be a galcom resolution. That way, it could ramp up over time, the tech leader wouldn't have as much control over it, and you wouldn't need to research the ability to catch up on research. As for rebalancing tech to be less snowbally, what if the +20% research techs instead unlocked the next tier of tech (with the same required number of techs before these became an option), but with the downside of making lower-tier tech more expensive? This would disincentivize beelining, make research agreements more useful for the tech leaders, and give new players a better understanding of how the tech system works.  

Somebody248 said: These research agreement techs would also become potentially harmful to whoever has a tech lead. If you don't have a research partner with about the same tech level, the only discounts you'll get (aside from repeatable cheese) are going to be on cheap techs that you skipped, so there won't be much benefit to improving those discounts. On the other hand, if the tech leader does research those techs, they become much cheaper for anyone with a research agreement. So, if you want to keep your lead, you could skip those techs and let anyone trying to catch up pay full price for a tech you got to skip. Click to expand...

Somebody248 said: Locking the ability to catch up faster on research behind research itself seems like a bad idea. It would mean that empires who are significantly behind on tech would catch up slower, which is the opposite of how it should work. Click to expand...

Somebody248 said: These research agreement techs would also become potentially harmful to whoever has a tech lead. Click to expand...

Stellaris Wiki

Personal tools

Navigation menu.

The user interaction aspect utilizes a card shuffle approach rather than a traditional tech tree presentation, thereby introducing an element of semi-randomness into the system.

• 1 Research areas & fields
• 2.1 Example
• 2.2 Research alternatives
• 3.1 Example
• 4.1 Salvager trait and Scavengers civic
• 5.1 Stored research
• 6 Research speed
• 7 References

Research areas & fields [ edit | edit source ]

There are three different main research areas in-game, with each area corresponding with one of the research resources. Additionally, each research area has multiple subcategories, for a total of 13 such subcategories, and every tech belongs to one of these subcategories.

The areas and their subcategories are as follows:

The card system [ edit | edit source ]

Although the underlying technology system is based on the familiar tech tree structure, it does away with the traditional interaction/presentation in favor of the card shuffle approach. This injects a semi-random element into research, making it somewhat less predictable as well as less linear.

Whenever the player is prompted to initiate a research project, the game gives them a "hand of cards" consisting of a semi-random selection of technologies available for research, which are picked randomly from a hidden "deck of cards" consisting of all valid research options that can appear.

Technologies are divided into 6 tiers (T0 to T5) of advancement. Higher tier technologies require obtaining a certain number of technologies from the preceding tier in the same area of research (set at 6 for all tiers [1] ) before they become available as research alternatives.

Every time the player meets the requirements for a given technology to become obtainable, the technology in question is added into the main "card deck" and then has a chance of appearing in the "card hand" whenever the game draws a new hand for the player to pick from. There is one basic parameter affecting a tech's chances of appearing in a given card hand:

• Weight – A base value denoting the relative chance (out of all the valid options) of a particular technology to be drawn as an alternative. This may be further modified by an empire's composition (ethics, civics, etc.) and its current state (scientist's traits, past tech, etc.).

To further increase variation, a tech which appeared as an alternative in the previous card hand has its weight halved in the next draw.

In general, the more advanced a technology is, the lower its weight (and the higher its cost). Systematically important techs (e.g. terraforming) have a higher weight (typically between 150% and double normal) to help ensure empires get a chance to research them, whereas rare technologies have significantly lower weight (typically one-eighth normal without the matching expertise). Some factors increase the weight of rare techs:

Research can be automated, in which case the game picks the cheapest technology to research unless a rare technology is available for research.

Example [ edit | edit source ]

If these were the only three valid techs and only one tech were to be drawn, then each tech's chances of being drawn would be 26.5% , 13.3% , and 60.2% respectively (rounded to 1 decimal place). Realistically, there are usually many more valid picks and so the probability of picking any given tech is significantly lower than the figures given here.

Research alternatives [ edit | edit source ]

By default, each card hand drawn contains 3 research selections, or alternatives , which may be further increased by a variety of factors. Additionally, some research cards may be gained as permanent alternatives . They appear below the regular alternatives and are distinguished from them by a golden border surrounding the tech card's bezel. These alternatives are usually acquired (along with some partial progress) through post-battle debris analysis , from special projects , anomalies , archaeological site , situations , or other events . These options always appear as available options when drawing a new card hand and remain as such until fully researched.

Unlike a permanent alternative, there is no guarantee for the technology in question to appear in the next card hand drawn.

The number of research alternatives can be increased by the following:

Research progress [ edit | edit source ]

In general, research time can be summarized as the following formula:

Research progress is one of the key elements affecting the time it takes to discover new technologies. It is formulated as follows:

While it is possible for the monthly research progress to remain constant during the course of researching a certain technology, it is more than likely to fluctuate – for better or for worse – due to consequences of various actions (such as exploration, empire development, expansion, etc.). This, in turn, may increase or decrease the total research time of a given tech.

This setup generates the following monthly research progress:

Assuming no further changes impact the above setup, the total research time of the tech would be:

Note: Partial research can refer to debris analysis, previous research, event rewards, etc.

Debris [ edit | edit source ]

Debris has a chance of spawning when at least a ship from enemy fleet is destroyed. Debris can provide progress on most components, weapons, and defenses, but not ship upgrades. The following are examples of technologies that cannot be obtained from debris:

Each component can only spawn if the components are above the technology level of the attacker. Each component debris provides 10% progress on the technology, or 10% progress on the prerequisite technology if the prerequisite technology is unresearched. If no component can be spawned, debris gives a small amount of stored research from a relevant area instead.

Salvager trait and Scavengers civic [ edit | edit source ]

If Research & Salvage Debris is enabled and a scientist with the Salvager or Master Salvager trait is in the same system, there is an additional 5% combo bonus chance to salvage a ship.

The precise formula is as follows; the same chance is applied independently for each potential salvageable ship in the debris:

Additional salvage chance is the sum of additional bonuses, namely from the Master Scrapper council position. Salvager trait level applies multiple times if scientists with different levels are present, including a scientist with Master Salvager, which applies a 1.5 multiplier. Thus, having a level 2 Salvager, a level 3 Salvager, and a Master Salvager in the system would create a total 9 times multiplier to the base additive chance.

With additional salvage chance of 0:

Research output [ edit | edit source ]

Each research area employs the use of a different research resource.

Each of these individual resources has a base production of 10 research points a month. Most research output comes from pops working the appropriate jobs or research stations on space deposits.

Stored research [ edit | edit source ]

Whenever research output is not actively used, it accumulates as stored research . Stored research also includes research resources gained from other avenues, such as debris analysis, anomalies, events, etc.

This allows for a more "relaxed" approach research by eliminating the possible loss of research points due to forgetting to pick a research project while, at the same time, also simulating accelerated periods of research (as opposed to sudden "jumps") caused by newfound knowledge sources. The current storage levels can be seen by hovering over the appropriate resources.

Stored research effectively doubles research speed, as it is spent at a rate matching current output, as long as there is enough stored research.

Research speed [ edit | edit source ]

Research speed represents a given expertise in a particular research area or field leading to shortened research time of related technologies.

Research speed boosts the effective research production in the following manner:

The most immediate sources of research speed modifiers are the scientists in your council. As the applied bonus depends on a scientist's skill level and overall traits, it is recommended to assign newly recruited scientists to command a science ship . Scientists on exploration duty tend to gain experience faster and, if one is in luck, they may also gain a new trait beneficial to research while leveling up.

Research Speed is affected by the following permanent or renewable modifiers. Other temporary modifiers to research speed may be gained from events or anomalies.

References [ edit | edit source ]

• ↑ See Stellaris/common/technology/tier/00_tier.txt for details.
• ↑ See Stellaris/common/script_values/01_script_values_paragons.txt country_salvage_ships_from_debris_chance for formula details

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