Ok first things first. You dont get access to any kind of research until you unlock the tech 'faction'. The techs are unlocked when either faction reaches level 3, eco engineers are the eco equivilent.
Once you reach this level you will get a message from Eve saying you can unlock the SAAT blueprints or something. Go to your ark and there will be a new button on the top left of it like below.
But this will say something about unlocking the tech. Once you click this Eve wil say it costs £10k are you sure etc. Once its unlocked you get access to all their blueprints and be able to use the tech buildings.
As you can see below:
There are 2 levels of techs. Only 2. The light red is level 1, lab assistants. The dark red is Researchers.
Lab assistants unlock the use of a laboratory, and this is the first stage of your research.
Everything you can craft in the lab is a one time use item. IE you use it, and it gets used up. The bottom half of these are placed in your warehouse on an island, and the top half are for ships.
As you can see from this image, things like this filtration plant can give a very welcome boost to a flaggin eco balance, and are useful to keep running. Another very important thing to note is at the bottom left of the lab screen you have a 15% mark, which is the chance, every time you create an item, to discover a prototype. These will be discusses later.
This building show above is the academy, and this is where the real magic happens. This is unlocked with researchers and from here you can research major improvements to your cities. Bare in mind most of these are socketed in your Ark based on tier, as below.
You can unlock more per tier as your career progresses.
The main thing to note about research is that you start off with very few items unlocked. The basic research at the top is where you should start. Every time you research, for example, units research, you unlock one more researchable item in the units section. As you see below you can eventually unlock all of them.
Ok now one you start unlocking bigger and better research items you will discover tech 3 (3 star) items. These are the best items in the game but will need a lot of materials to make. As you can see below:
The items in red are everything you need in stock before you can research this item. The item in yellow however is a lower tech version of the same item which you will need first.
As you can see below, the lower teir version of the item also needs a lot of parts, and has similar benefits to the teir 3 item, if in lower numbers.
Now two of the needed materials are every day items you may already have an excess of, but the ones outlined in red below are not. These are items you can research in your labs! So instead of using up the items as you gain them, you could be saving them up for these items.
Also its worth noting if you're short on spare items, every major item does have a teir 1 equivilent which needs nothing more then time and money. Its nowhere near as effective as teir 3 but still a nice boost. Unfortunately I took a picture of the wrong one here...
Now for a very important note about prototypes. Some very high end items like the super rotar below will need prototypes.
Prototypes can be gained in a few different ways. Firstly through making items in your labs you have a chance of creating a random one. Through some quests yuo can also sometimes gain one. THeres also a chance of finding abandoned old world labs on the oceon floor, although I've only ever found one without bribing an npc. Lastly, if you have a large excess of money and licences (you can easily max out lisences at 9,999 if you are creating a lot of lab items), then you can buy prototypes from trenchcoat whenever hes visiting.
It may seam expensive but its a constant supply of random items. Once you buy his first one you can rotate his stock like any other npc for a small charge (which is then more expensive each time, until its maximum price of £3k).
This, along with creating items in your lab whenever you have spare materials, are good ways to ensure yuo have the prototypes you need by the time you have researched the item you are after.
PS. Two things I forgot to add. Firstly research is random. It is entirely possible to unlock a teir 3 energy building item before you unlock the teir 2 version needed to create it!
I also forgot to add this picture:
At the bottom of your academy, in yellow here, you will find a percentage. When you first build your academy this is 100%. Depending on how many people you have living in the area this number rises to a maximum of 500%. This massively speeds up your research. Its worth noting, surrounding the academy with lab assistants (level 1 techs) wont get this very high, and researchers are needed. As you can also se, once it gets past 500% the rest of the population will be 'wasted' and it might be worth adding another academy nearby.
I hope this helps!
edit* Lol took 4 edits to fix my image tags, sorry!
I'll whittle up some nice guide with pix and such then!
Any tips?
