Hi everyone and welcome to the time machine that brings you pure nostalgia. I’m playing this atmospheric masterpiece since 1998 every now and then, but surely on a 2 year interval basis. So i have thousands of hours of experience and deep understanding of ingame mechanics. I don't care about speedrunners. This is a highscore game, therefore the true achievement is to get the highest score, not the fastest time. It took me over 10 days to get a score of 50k in 443 Turns. Wanna challenge me? I can send you the savegame i achieved it on.

I never played this game in english, so i dont know the exact translations of technologies and i‘m too lazy to look it up, but you’ll know what i mean.

The Screenshots are taken from two Gameplays (Fremen/Brown 39k and Borg/White 50k).

Please note that this Guide does not contain Genozide but rather a peaceful takeover with minimum loss of others lives. You could be faster if playing super agressive, but that's not my playstyle.

Let's get started!

The keys to success are:
- get Antaran Technology fast to conquer Orion
- have lots of captured colonists and a high population
- Score Multiplier of 3.4

Start New Game:
-Impossible
-Max Size
-Max Players
-Max Technology level
-Mineral Rich Galaxy
-Random Events
-Antarans Attack
-Tactical Combat

Choose Custom Race, choose Silicoids picture.

Choose negative Picks on
-Ship Attack
-Ship Defense
-Ground Attack
-Spying
-Poor Home World


Explanation:

You have to play on impossible with -10 picks in addition to the 4 picks you get from Evolution Mutation to get a score multiplier of 3.4.

Why Silicoids picture?

To make sure you don’t have them in your game as they are always repulsive. My recommendation to save yourself a hard time: Don't ever play a game with a race that is repulsive! You cannot interact with them and it's impossible to have control over their actions, especially in the early game. Since they tend to war with almost everyone because of their absence of diplomacy, they can already be wiped out before you made contact with them (or with the race they are at war with).



Next mandatory step:

Make sure you have a race in your game with double population Perk (Subterranean) like Sakkra or Darlocks. If Darlocks or Sakkra have Subterranean Perk is RNG and if they do, its usually in combination with being repulsive, so you need to be lucky. To check that, save the game right after start and Cheat with "Alt"+"iseeall", then go to race statistics in the Info section. Once you’ve cheated, you can’t get a high score, so reload if you have good rng or start a new game if bad rng. In my playthroughs Sakkra were the one with Subterranean Perk so i will mention Sakkra in the future instead of Subterranean.

Races that can be Repulsive: Sakkra, Darlocks, Trilarians, Silicioids (always)
Races that can be Subterranean: Sakkra, Darlocks, Silicoids

It is also essential to have Psilons in your game, as they are the only race to have Creativity Perk and therefore research everything, so you don't miss any technology and get full points for science.

A nice bonus in addition is a race that has +2 Perk on Industry, usually Meklars or Klackons. Captured Colonists keep their Race Perks! Benefit from that. You want to breed and clone those races preferably over your own!

Make sure you start at a border / corner, not in the middle of the map. You cannot handle all that diplomacy from the start if you have to face 4 or 5 races at the same time. You have only 2 or 3 turns until the diplomacy mood goes down and then it's too late for making a contract. Then you need to either boost the mood up with technology gifts or risk a war later when they start demanding things from you and you refuse.

RNG: Size and amount of Planets in your home System, Number of Systems that have at least one colonizable Planet in it, Total number of Planets, Enemy Races, Race Statistics, starting point on galaxy map

To get a minimum playable game you need ~5 restarts,

To get acceptable RNG (subterranean and no repulsive race) you need ~30 restarts.

For good RNG (subterranean, no repulsive race, at least 110 planets, at least 3 systems with 5 planets, home world in the corner, at least 3 planets in home system with medium size minimum, at least 10 planets huge and ultra rich, Orion system has at least 4 planets/asteroids/gas giants) ~50 Restarts.

Grow your population ASAP. Build colony ships. Expand. Doesn't matter if the planet is worth colonizing it. Just do it. Get Science and Trade Treaties ASAP. Use diplomacy every turn. If someone doesn't want a treaty with you (yet), keep his mood up with technology gifts that yourself will benefit from later: Population growth technology (Biosphere, Clone Center, Terraforming) are good gifts. Spies are useless, you literally have 0% in spying at this point. But build some spies to prevent others from stealing Technology from you. If it's inevitable and someone steals a technology from you, load autosave and trade it or gift it! Be diplomatic at all costs. Beg others to end war with each other. The enemy rarely invades Planets but bombards them until no one is left. You don't want to lose potential points so prevent that!

Essential Technologies to research or acquire:
-Board Ferries
-All population extension/food producing
-All industry boost/pollution reduction (deep core waste dump replaces all others so you can skip the first two)
-Gravitation Generator
-All moral boost related buildings and technology

This makes sure you have the highest industry output (fast building times).


Build 6-7 Battleships with 50% Extra Space, 3xArmor,3x Structural Points and equip them with 2x5 Board Ferries.

Research Power until Anti Matter Engine.
Research Physics until Plasma Rifle.
Research Construction until Titan Ship.
Research Chemistry until Thorium Fuel Tank.
Research Power until Interphase Engine
Research Physics until Stargate (you need to rely on other races to get Star Converter anyhow...)
Research Construction until Death Star.
Take Deep Core Waste Dump over Deep Core Mining.
Ignore all other Weapon related research!

Check Details in Chapter "Research Tree"


Get further Biology and Sociology technologies from other players. Get better Armor, Engine and Fuel Tank from other players, refit your ships as soon as you have better technology. Exchange or demand the technologies needed from diplomatic races first like Alkari, Humans or Psilons, if they decline or declare war, reload. Try again every turn. The stronger you get and the older the technology gets the liklier they give it to you. Never give away Plasma Rifle or Thorium Fuel Tank!
Force Fields and Computers are not essential Research Trees and can be ignored for now!

The essential turning point and main goal in this game is: You want the Antarans to attack you to capture one of their ships, usually a Marauder, then scrap it to get their technologies.

This will need a lot of patience and luck (yes, if the Antarans will attack you, then you're lucky!) as Antarans often attack only the strongest Player (which is not you) and they also have a 50% chance on self-destruct when being captured (an already captured ship can be destroyed by the self-destruct of another ship!). Since you're colonizing every Planet, they might Attack weak ones that get entirely destroyed. That's OK. It's called pawn sacrifice. Fun Fact: If you have an Outpost Ship sent to an Asteroid Belt/Gas Giant, Antarans might even Attack this one but since there is no Picture for that in Combat screen, the Picture of a newly constructed Giant infertile Planet is used instead showing 0 Population.

Please note that everything in your enemies and your turn is scripted! If you make the same moves in combat, the outcome of the fight is always the same. If you reload one turn back or load your autosave, you need to change the order of attack or the number of ships to have a different outcome. Save at the end of every turn and make Backup copies of your savegames after 10 turns.

Once you captured an Antaran ship (around Turn 124), you have already done the hardest part. If you‘re very lucky, you get away with 2 ships. If you're insanely lucky, you get away with 3 ships. Now save the game and scrap the ship(s). You need these 3 technologies at all costs now:


-Particle Beam
-Xentronium Armor
-Damper Field


Death Ray is essential for the game later, but you’ll get that from Orion anyway. Moleculartroniccomputer is also nice thing to have, no beam miss anymore. You might consider this as the 4th essential Technology but if you have only one Antaran Ship it's highly unlikely that you get all 4 from one ship, so this is 2nd priority. Reflecting field seems to be powerful, but i barely used it since 9000HP on a Death Star with 75% Damage Reduction is already OP. Most useless technologies (for you) are Neutronbomb, ELOGM, Quantum Detonator, Spatial Field and Black Hole Generator. Although they can be traded later to get Technologies like Deep Core Mining, Advanced Town Planning, Uridium Fuel Tank or Entertainment Center.

Important:
The technologies that you get when you scrap a ship change every 2 turns. So if you're not happy with what you got, reload and wait 2 turns. Sometimes you get 4, sometimes only 1 new technology. Choose wisely.

Be patient. This is the turning Point in the game so don't screw it up!

Now build 3-4 Titan Ships with

+50% Space
3xArmor
3xReinforced Hull
Damper Field
9-16 Heavy Mount (HM) Particle Beam

to get to Orion as fast as possible. Other Races might already have a stronger fleet than you. It's a tight race.

Side Note:

If you didnt get the +125 Molecular Computer from Antaran ship scrap, your Ship Computer is too weak, so the beams dont hit the Guardian of Orion. Then it's better to use Zeon Missiles or better rockets. Equip rockets as 2-Shot with highest amount of rockets possible (20-25). In one Game, the Guardian destroyed all my rockets, so i had to use Beam, in another game i finished him with Rockets only…anyway how you do it, be sure you are the first to get to Orion of course…
Save game, get to Orion, check out if the Guardian is defeated by Beam, if not, reload and change to missiles. This will take time, yes, but you cannot afford to use those extra turns on remodelling your ships as the more turns you need to finish the game, the less points you get and also Psilons are getting stronger and stronger every turn. Also other races might then conquer Orion before you.

Be sure to have only 3 Ship leaders before conquering Orion, otherwise, Loknar cannot join you. Loknar will reveal the rest of the map, so all the other races you haven't met yet will contact you after conquering Orion.

Now we can really start off the game! Once you've colonized Orion, get its population and industry to max asap. Unless you don't have other rich/ultra rich Planets, this will be your main Shipyard now. Refit your ships again.

Build ships with
+50% Space
3xArmor
3xReinforced Hull
Damper Field
2x2 HM Death Ray (later: 2x3, 2x4, 2x5, 3x4, 3x5)
2x3 Board Vessels (2x4, 2x5, 3x4)
Add Transporter and Subspace Teleporter to the ships (Refit) as soon as available.


Focus on Enemies that are closest to you with higher Technology Level or on Klackons/Sakkra to get their citizens that help you develop faster.

Attack Strategy:

Move/Teleport close to an enemy Ship and use 1st Death Ray to break Shields and kill Infantry on board, use Board Button to capture it. Use 2nd Death Ray to break Shields of the next ship. Move behind/left/right of it and send 1xBoarding Ferries. If you're close enough, they will conquer the ship instantly! Works not from the front! So 1 Ship of yours conquers 2 of your enemy. Now you can wipe out any enemy by just capturing his fleet, use the fleet against him, then scrap it to get new technologies.

Always fight Psilons at last! They‘re way too strong for you! Always refuse Trading Offers/Requests with other races if they contain one of the Antaran Technologies. You can also gift technologies to boost their mood if neccessary. Androids and Population Growth Technologies like Advanced Town Planning or Gaia Transformation are always a good gift. Saves you time in late game.

Get better Engine and Fuel Tank technology from other players in exchange for something you don't need. Exchanging technologies is always unbenefitial for you, as you have to give away better technology for a „weaker“ one. But it's neccessary for completion to get all Technology points in the end. Don't worry, you'll get most of the technology by capturing planets. As i said, spies are useless. You might get 1 or 2 technologies through spies only but the diplomatic consequences are really not worth it. Only exchange Antaran technologies when you are just about to eliminate another Player!
Weapons are always good for trading, since you are already OP with Xentronium/Death Ray and Particle beam! You can often just demand weaker technologies from Psilons and trade / gift them to other races.

Make sure no enemy is wiped out by another race! You will lose 100 points for each race you did not wipe out by yourself. Diplomacy is the key. Dont make allies! Only trading, science and not-attack-contracts. Once you‘re getting stronger, demand 5% of them. 10% will often be rejected and lead to immediate war but give it a try. Use spies only for defense or if you are already at war with an enemy. Make sure you get as much of his technologies you don't have yet before you kill him, therefore check the Info section to compare technology levels. Technologies you don't have appear in a lighter green. Don't side with any player on council voting, only if it gets you advantage. Exchange all technologies an enemy has just before you kill him so that another player cannot steal your technology from him! If a player steals any Antaran technology from you, reload the game!

If Psilons ever get their hands on Xentronium or Dampening field, it's game over for you. Focus on the weaker enemies first and conquer Sakkra Planets to grow their population AFAP and send them to other planets to increase overall Population of planets in the Galaxy. Send Klackons/Meklars to your Ship Producing Planets. Send Sakkra on Top to get Ultra Rich 42 Planets. Colonize medium sized and smaller planets and just leave them as they are. You will get to know why in Chapter 4. Focus also on population growth and science research in this phase. Check Priority list from chapter one and Research Tree in the last Chapter. Have enough freighters (500). Capture planets of another race until they have only one planet left. Don't kill them entirely yet. You‘ll still gonna need that player. Check diplomacy every turn to see who is at war with whom and try to get them end their war. If not possible, finish the player yourself. Have at least one colony in every enemies system and build warpfield limiter and - if already available- build Planets from Asteroid belts and Gas Giants. Use stargate technology to travel around fast.

If you're running out of money, set Tax rate to 50% for a few turns. Otherwise it should be 0% all the time, so you can build faster.

Create Outpost ships and send them to Asteroid Belts / Gas Giants. You can use this as a Shortcut for your fleets once you have gained the Stargate Technology.
This works also for Systems the enemy controls with Gas Giants/Asteroid Belts in it. Sneak through the backdoor to get around warpfield limiter!
Fun Fact: An Occupied Planet by your Outpost is not colonized by anyone but you can colonize an Outpostplanet anytime.
Also Empty Systems with an Outpost are a good diplomatic gift. You can even send leaders to Empty Systems. Empty Systems don't start with a capital letter.

Once you have Death Star technology, stop building Titan ships. You can start by building death stars with no weapons in it. Refit is faster then building a complete new one!

Overall Death Star layout suggestion:

+50% Space
3xArmor
3xStructural points
Damper Field
Transporter (useless against Psilons)
Subspace Teleporter
1 Star Converter
2x4 HM Death Ray
2x2 Boarding Vessels

Increase amount of Death Ray to 3x5 when more Space is available.

Have only 3 Ship or Planet leaders so new ones can appear until you are satisfied with your leader Setup. Ship leaders are pretty much useless in late gameplay but here are the best ship leaders anyway:
Loknar (of course), Dalan, Dantos, Caern, Karg, Tellik, Tulock

Best leader Perks are faster travel (ignoring nebula and black holes) and ship damage.

Best colony leaders in late game:
Androgena, Black Razor, Necron, Tanus, Xantus, Electra, Mystic X, Orphus, Rash Iki, Malovane

In early and midgame, have at least one leader with the Famous Perk to attract better ones.

Best leader Perks are bonus on population growth and industry. Moral boost is also quite ok.

If a leader appears with technology offers, like Megatron or Kronos, hire him and fire him immediately. You can keep the technology and use it for trading.

In my Opinion the biggest issue with this game is: leaders appear way to rarely in mid and late game, like every 50-100 turns. If a good leader appears and you're happy you got one you might find yourself in the unfortunate situation that somone killed a Planet or even wiped out another race in between and you didn't notice, so you have to reload...and the leader won't reappear, because he joins another race then. Leaders are the biggest RNG. So it is likely that you still have low level 1 Perk leaders at Turn 200. Also leaders who joined other races won't join you, even after the player has been eliminated. When you capture a ship with a leader on it, he simply disappears into the void...to me the biggest weakness of the game. They could have at least let you choose whether you want to hire their leader or not.

Usually leaders appear / are promoted after council voting. Can't remember if a new leader appears the same turn as another one is promoted. Don't think so but needs to be confirmed so i guess it's either promotion or a new one.

Put only 2-3 colonists into food production to get slightly over zero to save freighters. (except for your ship producing Planets, always have only workers on rich and ultra rich Planets).

Once you gained Star Converter and Planet Construction Technology, you can start Phase 4.
This Phase will take the most of your time.

Important:
You want to have as many Star Systems with inhabital planets as possible in your Galaxy. A System with 1 tiny toxic Planet and 4 Asteroid Belts can be transformed via Planet Reconstruction into 5xGaia with 35 population each! The more Systems with only one or zero Planets, the less points you get as you cannot colonize them. This is the main RNG in this game. Find the System with the lowest possible population (e.g. one planet only, small, toxic) and save this one for the very end as this Planet will remain to the last Player alive.

And here it is, the Glitch you didn't know about:

If you destroy a planet with the Star Converter and rebuild it using Planet Reconstruction technology, it will always be a giant planet, no matter which size it was before! So you can turn small planets magically into giant ones! That means by the time you will only have planets with 35 and 42 Population!

Unfortunately you cannot gift your home system to any other player, so if you start on a small planet and with fewer than 3 (potential) planets in your system, thats unfortunate and you might think about restart.

Use this method to win the game:
- Have at least one ship with star converter in your fleet
- Capture a planet from a player you are at war with
- Build Alien Administration, Clone Center and Infantry Barracks on every captured planet
- Wait until population is fully integrated (not yellow anymore)
- Move one population unit of your own race to that planet
- Scrap clone center
- Relocate all the integrated aliens to another planet so that only one population unit of your own race is left
- Gift that system to a player you are at war with. Only gift it. No peace treaty. It takes 10 turns after starting a war until you can make diplomatic contact again
- Attack the system next turn
- Capture all planets in that system of the race you are currently at war with, except the one with 1 population
- Destroy this planet. Since it is your own race you won’t get moral minus in diplomacy.
- Use Construction Planet to rebuild it
- Create colonization outpost or use colony ship
- Relocate citizens to new planet
- Priority list of buildings for all Planets:
1 Clone Center (always buy this for 400BC immediately)
2 Biosphere (buy this as well)
3 Automated Factory
4 Robo Mining
5 Robot Factory
6 Recyclotron
7 Deep Core Mining
8 Deep Core Waste Dump
9 Astro University
10 Gravitation Generator (if needed)
11 Infantry Barracks
12 Holosimulator
13 Entertainment Center
14 Food Replicator (except for Rich+ Planets)
15 repeat build Terraforming
16 Gaia Transformation
17 Autolab
then all biology related buildings (hydroponic farm, underground farm, weather control, etc) and all science buildings (science lab, supercomputer, galactic cybernet) and then sociology related buildings (space harbor, stock market). At last Star Fortress. Don't build any other planetary defenses except Star Fortress to get Commando Points. Starfleet Academy, Shields and Dimension Portal are also obsolete
- Have at least one planet in your system with warpfield limiter
- Never use Androids!
- Once the population is maxed out, send Sakkra. 27+8=35,32+10=42
- Turn all Asteroid Belts and Gas Giants into planets
- You can Terraform every Planet to Gaia except toxic ones. So all toxic ones need to be destroyed (even if its ultra rich and giant!) Use Radiation Shield to turn hostile planets into habitable ones (if needed)
- Start with the weakest enemies and make sure that you have always one player you can gift systems to. The reason why you gift systems to the player you are at war with is that you can get it back the next turn by attacking it. Make sure your fleet is in that system…
- Never bombard planets! Only invade them. You get 1 point for every captured 2 citizen. Dead citizens don't create points! Be careful when attacking planetary defenses! Try to not overkill to avoid citizen loss. Put HM Death Ray in group of max 5 at once on your ship and then add another Group of 4 or 5 depending on your space. Hyper advanced technology reduces size of your equipment. (1 point in Physics-> -50 space needed for Star Converter, max 50% space reduction) Refit your ships!
- Watch out for rebellions. Keep a fleet of 1 or 2 death stars and at least 4 ground troop ships in that system to re-conquer it fast. Trilarians and Meklars tend to start a rebellion quite often. Rebellions are good, cause you get more captured citizens points.
- If you recapture a planet with your own race on it, it is immediately integrated.
- If you have a System with 2 small Planets you have to do the process twice to get both Planets to giant.

This Phase will take a lot of time. One Turn sucks up easily 15-20 minutes as you have to do a lot of micromanagement with relocating citizens and selecting all new buildings to build.

Choose 7 to 8 of your biggest and richest planets for ship production. Put a leader there who provides bonus on industry. 35 ultra rich is more productive than 42 rich! Exchange your population on these Planets with Meklars or Klackons and send Sakkra on Top to get 1,6k-2,4k production points so that a Death Star should take a maximum of 6-9 turns.

Use advantage of the Perks other races have like +2 on Industry,Science or Food and use them in that specific field only. Psilons should always be scientists and not workers. Notice that the Limit of Science Points is 32767.

I never build Food Replicator on rich or ultra rich planets as they consume production points.


At this state you should have around 800 freighters. You can have only 25 Colonists moving through the Galaxy at the same time so keep that in mind if you relocate citizens that take 4 or more turns to reach their destination…

When only 2 other Players are left it's time to turn against Psilons. At this time you should have 60+ Death Stars, excluded the captured ones.

Last War Death Star Layout:
+50% space
3xArmor
3xStructural points
Damper Field
Subspace Teleporter
2xAttack/Move per turn

2x1 Star Converter
2x5 HM Death Ray
3x1 Stasis Field


The key to win against Psilons and their overwhelming fleet is Stasis Field. Remember: Defenders always get their turn after attackers (Except Antaran Planet) so you're the one who needs to first strike. You can provoke Psilons into war by demanding something ridiculous!
Psilons have like 60-80 Death Stars and equal amount of Titan Ships and lots of other ships at this point, usually divided into 2 fleets. You can decide to conquer the fleet or to destroy it. I usually keep some captured ships. You know, for the Fleet Museum. Depends on your gameplay. Play the first round by yourself, switch then to fast Autoplay with "z" or "y".

Send your main fleet to interdict the Psilons fleet. Make sure your fleet is ready and you have at least 1 Death Star with 5 Troop Ships in every Psilons System. Attack as many Systems as possible simultaneously. Always go for the weakest Planet first. Choose 2-3 Systems with 4-5 Planets for Infantry Ship Production and send reinforcements every turn. You'll need 5-7 of them for one Planet. Your Death Star Production is not needed anymore, so change your production on Rich+ Planets into Trading Goods.

It’s all about sending your Sakkra Citizens throughout the Galaxy and grow Population as fast as possible to Max Out every Planet ASAP. Bottleneck here is waiting for Captured Aliens to be integrated and the amount of colonists that can be sent through the Galaxy.

Final Death Star layout:
+50% Space
3xArmor
3xStructure
Damper Field
Reflecting Field
High Energy Focus
Achilles Aiming System
Hyper X Condensators

1 Star Converter
3x4 HM Death Ray


Since you don't need your ship producing planets anymore, set Tax Rate to 50% and simply buy every building that takes more than one turn. In fact, you only need buildings that grow your population afap. Build Biosphere and Terraforming first on new planets now and relocate citizens there. Note that your income is capped to 32767 MC per turn and 35%-50% of the costs are buildings and 1% freighters so your income will decrease over time from 20k to 15k per turn. Have 1000-1100 freighters now.

Send 8/10 Sakkra to any Planet with 27/32 Population. Once they arrived, split them evenly to all Planets in the System and put all your Citizens into Industry field and switch to House Building. That's why you need high industry points, cause the way this game works is growing citizens by producing them, not feeding them...always put the newly produced citizens into the Industry field, Check out at which point the population growth is max.The more people the slower the growth. At half of the Population its like 2 million colonists per turn, later only 60k. You can also use artificial food dispenser technology / Food Replicator now in every colony so you need less freighters. You literally can feed the entire Galaxy with one Planet focussing on food production.

Under certain circumstances it is possible to exceed the Population limit of a Planet (see Screenshot). But i'm too lazy to explain how, i'm Sorry.

Eliminating the Psilons is 100 Points, as is winning the Council Voting. Defeating Antarans is 250 points, so wipe out the entire Galaxy except for one Planet with the lowest population.

Council voting is pretty obsolete now as you have 400-600 votes against 2.

Make sure to have every Hyper Advanced Technology at level V, you don't get any more points beyond this level.

Once your Population is at Max on every Planet, build a Dimension Portal and crush the Antarans with their own captured fleet and enjoy the sweet Victory of your peacefully balanced hyper advanced Galaxy!

The game can only display 32767 Points and starts to get negative then so a negative score wouldn't be displayed in the Hall of Fame, of course...

Hope you enjoyed this Guide and learned new stuff to this masterpiece of a game, feel free to ask questions and comment below.

Leave a like!

Cheers.

I will list the mandatory technologies here. If you have 2 or 3 technologies needed from one Research Field, my recommendation for research is in the brackets. How you get the rest is up to you.


Construction
-Boarding Vessels
-Titan Construction
-Construction Planet and Recyclotron (choose Recyclotron)
-Robot Factory
-Deep Core Mining and Deep Core Waste Dump (choose Deep Core Waste Dump)
-Advanced Town Planning
-Death Star Construction

Chemistry
-Iridium Fuel Tank
-Micro Light Building
-Uridium Fuel Tank
-Thorium Fuel Tank

Computers
-Holosimulator
-Virtual Reality Network
-Entertainment Center

I only researched Holosimulator, got the rest from others.

Physics
-Gravitation Generator
-Jump Gate and Subspace Communication (this is a tough one since you can't give ships new commands when they're on their way but i'd go with Jump Gate anyway since Hyperspace Comm is earlier available then Star Gate)
-Phasor Rifle
-Plasma Rifle
-Hyperspace Communication
-Star Gate, Star Fortress and Star Converter (choose Star Gate)

Power
-Ion Engine
-Anti Matter Engine
-Transporter
-Megaflux
-Hyper Engine
-Interphase Engine

Sociology
-Astro University

Biology
-Microbiotics
-Terraforming
-Underground Farm and Weather Control
-Psionik
-Universal Antidote
-Bimorphological Mushrooms, Evolution Mutation, Gaia Transformation

I did not research a single Biology Technology, i got them all from others.


Force fields
The only real mandatory technologies are Subspace Teleporter and Stasis Field.
Benefitial Additions:
-Radiation Shield (to turn Red Planets into Green ones but only essential for late game and since most of the radiated Planets are small ones you barely need one)
-Personal Shield
-Warpfield Limiter

I did also not research any of these and got them from others.

If you're smart, you try to get all technologies from one field through other players to skip the research entirely, like if you get Dimension Portal and Disruptor Cannon from others it will lead from Plasma Rifle directly to Hyperspace Comm!