Welcome to El Biznatchio's (da Biznatchist) Guide to Making Technology Work for You!

This guide is to allow for effective use of the Technology Tree. You goal is to have technology work for you and not the other guy, and that's why we're here.

This Screen is the bread and butter of the game, and with things that are big and scary (namely the size of this screen), it is always best to keep it under wraps and not show it off. It's what the judge said during the hearing granting my Ex the restraining order, and it works for me. Also he was quite liberal in granting it, I'm not allowed to be anywhere near Houston.

In my previous guide I mentioned how choices are not your friend, here it goes doubly. Specialization is the word when using the tech tree.

The most important screen tab in the screen is actually the fourth one, Research Stations. This tab lists your research stations and how much research they're generating, but that's not why it's important.
That red box with the word "Infinity" in it? That is the most important item in the entire Research Screen. The number or concept (which infinity represents) inside the box is the research cap for your Empire. This is the number which you will want to avoid exceeding and allows you to research technologies.

I recomend building your research facilities separate from other facilities such as Space Ports. With technology gains increasing the effectiveness of your labs and also Leader Bonuses factored, you may end up with too much research and will have to close facilities.

In Distant Worlds you have three fields of research, each functions individually and have their very own labs specializing in producing research. What this means is you don't have to select one field of research over the other and can research all three effectively.

Weapons Tab is a good place to start as any (mainly because it's the first tab).


The trick with Weapons research is picking weapons that mesh together and focusing on those. This allows you to focus research on those paths, greatly increasing their power and the effectiveness of your fleets in battle.

Weapon categories are as follows:

• Beam Weapons: No hit penalties, decreased weapon damage/effectiveness at range.
  
• Ion Weapons: Same as Beam Weapons.
  
• Gravitic Weapons: Tractor Beams that do damage, has same characteristics as Beam Weapons.
  
• Area Weapons: Weapons that do Area of Effect (AOE) Damage, useful for Area Denial.
  
• Energy Torpedo Weapons: See Beam Weapons.
  
• Star Fighters: Allows your ships or bases to build fighters (or bombers).
  
• Ship Boarding: Allows for boarding of ships and bases.
  
• Missile Weapons: Missiles that track and follow targets.
  
• Projectile Weapons: Rail guns, these have tracking issues and reduced ability to hit targets.
  
• Armor Plating: Self Explanatory.
  
• Ground Combat: Upgrades your ground troops.

Of these, the only required weapon research fields are Armor Plating and Star Fighters, and less so for Star Fighters. Armor Plating will increase the survivability of your fleets and bases, while Star Fighters allows for deployment of fighters providing you a standoff combat ability.

The Weapon Research fields you should look at choosing are generally race specific and give access to more powerful weaponry at mid and upper tech level. You will find that the final tech in each tree is usually better than the race specific technology.

• Beam Weapons: Wekkarus, Best Beam Weapon range until final tech.
  
• Energy Torpedo Weapons: Boskara and Shakturi, Massive Damage boost.

Outside of these three races Technologies should be chosen based on play style. Try mixing a missile type weapon with either a beam type weapon or projectile weapon for best results. This allows you to focus on those technologies and gives you a leg up on the higher difficulties.

A word of caution on Projectile Weapons, the 10% hit penalty may end up being too much on higher difficulties due to decreased weapon hit rates.

Based on the layout of the tech tree, I would recomend Torpedo Weapons over Missle Weapons. Torpedos are necessary for the Light Torpedo Bombers and Advanced Fighter techs and the more advanced versions of these technologies. The trade off is in Ship Boarding and Missile Bombers (If you're following my other guides and designing ships based on the tech tree, capturing ships is next to worthless)

Sample Tech Tree: *These recomendations assume a pre-warp start.

• Enhanced Beam Weapons, Energy Torpedo Weapons, Star Fighters, Enhanced Missiles, Armor Plating, Improved Assault Tactics, Improved Defense Tactics.
  
• Efficient Blasters, Enhanced Torpedoes, Light Torpedo Bombers, Light Interceptors, Point Defense Weapons, Bombard Weapons, Armored Ground Assault.
  
• Long Range Lasers, High Power Blasters, Fast Energy Propulsion, High Energy Cohesion, Tactical Interceptors, Enhanced Point Defense, Enhanced Bombardment, High Density Alloys, Battlefield Sabotage, Shipboard Marines.
  
• Advanced Laser Focussing, Synchronized Energy Output, Total Energy Acceleration, High Power Discharges, DualPhase Point Defense, Annihilating Bombardment, Reinforced Construction, Ship Defense Systems.
  
• Advanced Beams, Advanced Plasma Physics, Advanced Fighters, MultiPhase Point Defense, Severe Radiation Blast, Ablative Metals, Assault Marines.
  
• Beam Intensification, Intense Plasma Eruptions, Strike Bombers, Advanced Star Fighters, Terminal Point Defense, Total Destruction, Impregnable Structures, Ship Defense Networks.
  
• Beam Superflow, Plasma Hardening, Heavy Assault Bombers, Superiority Fighters, Industructible Compounds, Armored Assault Marines.

*Again these are recomendations, mileage will vary based on playstyle and perks of races played.

On this Tab you find technologies that increase the effectiveness of your bases and ships.


While I can go into detail on this tab, there's very little needed. All of the technologies are useful and to get to the higher technologies you generally need to research all mid tier technologies, reducing effectiveness of specialization. The only exceptions to this are the race specific technologies. These technologies are usually powerful enough to forgo further research in those fields in the event you need to catch up in another.

• Fusion Ignition: Quameno.
  
• Ultrafast Shield Recharging: Zenox.
  
• Pulse Jump Theory: Dhayut.
  
• Ultra Efficient Engines: Ackdarian.
  
• Very High Thrust Engines: Sluken.
  
• Accelerated Maneuvering: Mortalen.

Due to the potential benefits of being able to skip one of these fields with the racial technologies those six races make solid choices in higher difficulty level games. This allows you to place more focus on other technologies in this tab.

Ikkurd receive a repair bot technology which has some kind of damage reduction and might increase survivability of fleets and bases. The fact that this is a separate tech from the rest of the tree means it's one more thing in this tab they need to research.

This section needs little explanation.


Outside of the Resource Exploration tree, all of these technologies are useful, some more useful than others. Particular noteworthy trees are Colonization, Target Tracking, and Countermeasures. The last two are very important in higher difficulty games and the racial specific technologies make those races solid for higher difficulty game races, Holographic Projection Kiadian and Situational Awareness AI Ugnari.

I would focus on the noteworthy technologies and then fill out additional technologies on an as needed basis. The bonuses on the other technologies are useful, however they can be ignored. Cash can be obtained from taxes, research can be increased by building additional research labs instead of upgrading them.

Recommendations in this guide are not to be taken as gospel. In general you want to be flexible and also want to try to get the most bang for your research buck so to say. This is not like other games where it is a necessity to research everything, much can be safely avoided allowing you to potentially jump ahead in technology race.

Also, the guide is light in data, in the future I may or I expect other players to create guides with more firm data on weapons and other technologies. In this guide I avoided doing so as it is always possible in a future update that the game is "rebalanaced" making those calculations of limited value.