Quick Summary (for those Section Leaders with no time for reading)

• Mines: Give resources and increase the amount each K-drone produces per tick, level up Mines through Construcion and sometimes Research
• Refineries: Refines resources to allow production of more advanced units, level up Refinieris through Construcion and sometimes Research
• Data Center/Lab Modules: Building these will unlock additional research branches and raise the max level of certain research branches. Also, many advanced research branches require a minimum number of free Lab Modules in order to begin. Build more Lab Modules by first constructing the Data Center, then you can build up to 20 Lab Modules through Construction. Every time you begin a research that requires Lab Modules, you will use up some of your free Lab Modules. See how many free and used Lab Modules you currently have near the top of either the Construct or Research pages

Construction & Research in General

     Construction and research are your primary means of developing your base, as well as your mines and refineries. You can access your currently available research and construction projects by clicking the Research or Construction link on the menu on the left after logging in. Each construction or research project has a description explaining the benefit completion of the project will give you.

At the beginning, although there are many different opening strategies, generally it is a good move to begin a construction project on one of your mines. You can see by clicking the Construction link that you may begin construction on any of your three mines. You can see the cost and how long it will take. Likewise, you can begin Espionage research from the outset by clicking the Espionage link

. Not all research/construction projects are available for you from the outstart. Some constructions require research before they can be initiated, and some research branches require the completion of lower level researches before they will be available. For example, after you complete a mine construction project, you will find a new construction path will appear, the Refinery for that resource. Furthermore, choose your researches carefully, as you will have a limited amount of them that you be able to complete, depending on the number of Lab Modules you construct, as will be explained below.

Research and Lab Modules

      You'll find that there are basically three types of researches available to you: 1- general research (always available), 2- lab module research (these each require a certain number of lab modules to be constructed and available before they will appear), and 3- hidden/combination research (these only appear after certain combinations of research branches are initiated or completed or some special task is accomplished in game). You already know about some category 1 research/construction, such as Mines and Espionage. Category 2 research requires the construction of a Data Center, which is the nerve center of your research department. There are dozens of research projects that can only be explored by building a Data Center, therefore this should be one of the early constructions you complete.

You can read a bit about many category 2 research branches below. Each of these require the Data Center and a number of Lab Modules before they will be available. For example, the Transwarp Drive research branch, which gives you the ability to send an army to a target base instantaneously, requires 6 lab modules. It will take you some time to build up that many, so in the meantime you might want to develop the Speed of Attack research branch, which can lower the amount of time it takes for your armies to reach the target, and only requires 2 lab modules.

As you begin the researches, keep in mind that you can only build a maximum of 20 lab modules. Once you begin a research, the required number of lab modules are assigned to that branch of research and cannot be reassigned. So choose your research projects wisely!