Matrix Games Forums

I fianlly found out why I only have 1 spy. Something to do about the amount of planets I have. But what I don't understand is why can't I assaign any missions to it? I had a popup to ask me if I wanted to put my spy in a mission against another empire, but I said no, and wanted to see the intelligence screen myself. Well I can't put him in a mission. He is just doing anti spy work. So why can't I put him in a mission, or if I can how?

Also, how do I know what I have already researched? How do I tell what I am researching now? I believe when I go to the research screen the techs on the right side is what I will be researching. What is the stuff on the left? Is that my current level?

What are the best places to put research bases? Can I just put some in the middle of nowhere? Are star bases the only place where you can do research? I still have it in my mind to get research we need to build libraries or research posts. I see in this game it is Research Star Bases that give us our research points. Is this correct?

Any other tidbits about the spy game or research game, that you can think of, let us know.

If you decline the mission suggestion that agent will be put to do counter-intelligence for the next year instead. Just press the cancel mission button in the bottom right to re-assign him as you prefer.

The left hand components are the last researched in that field, the right hand is the one currently being researched, clicking on either brings up the components guide letting you scroll through what you have researched sorted per area. Think it's random how it distributes the research points you generate for the four main branches i.e. the 125k energy tech output I have in my current game seems to nearly all go towards hyper drives (atleast that's the only one I've noticed moving any the past few months) but I'd appreciate if someone could clarify things, is the output listed at the top the annual increase and is tech remaining simply the difference in the tech stat between previous and currently researched?

As to research bases I've removed the tech lab components from all my normal starbases and only use specialized bases I place near stars with a research bonus: black holes, neutron stars or novas. But again that's just how I like it, not sure there's any best way and if you're unlucky you won't find any such stars near your systems.

Thanks Seraphim, I will try it out. I never thought of taking the labs out of the star bases. What is the purpose of this? I don't get it. Is it to make more room on the star base? I thought having more research points would benifit no matter where they came from.

Oops my mistake, you don't see the previously researched component in the tech screen, have to visit the component guides for that. As for the lab I mostly try to slim them down to save on costs for space ports and the such but you could of course replace it with other components.

And more research isn't always better since the game puts a soft cap on your output that increases as you grow, a single station dedicated to research is more then enough for me for the first decade or so.

I take out the labs from my initial small port design and replaced those with weapons, as a quickie frontier installation with no frills and some basic defense built in. Later on as those frontier worlds become core worlds I then upgrade those to a larger port design with labs.