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I'm interested in comparing notes on early game research (pre-warp start).

With Energy Research: Energy Collector, Space Construction, Enhanced Construction, Warp Field, Hyperdrive, Shields, Accelerated Construction, Component Prefabrication, Hydrogen Reactor.

Construction research is essential as the extra ship size vastly improves the range of early explorers, the capability of military ships and the effectiveness of private ships.

I use a Speed 55 explorer to get to Warp Field Ruins quickly with Quameno so the timing to finish Enhanced Construction works out pretty close.

With Weapons Research: Improved Assault Tactics, Improved Defence Tactics, Armor Plating, Improved Ground Assault and then a Torpedo focus (at least until High Energy Cohesion enabling Shockwave Torpedoes).

Early game Independents are the primary focus as they start with much higher populations than new colonies. I normally retire any Troops at the start game, then start building Troops and Armored Forces with the above research available. After that it is essential to focus on a single weapon to ensure at least one higher tier weapon is available as quickly as possible. That said, I probably need to do more checking on whether Armored Forces adds enough value to delay the time taken to at least get to Shockwave Torpedoes.

With HighTech Research: Medical Systems, Advanced Medicine, Biological Workshops (enabling Advanced Medicomplex), Enhanced Resource Exploration, Structured Research, Advanced Research (enabling Ruslan), Enhanced Commerce, Open Trade Network (enabling Traders Bazaar), Long Range Scanner.

Early game I'm always looking for times to set 0% tax to optimise growth on my homeworld. I generally play Quamemo who have low population growth . Advanced Medicomplex has a 100% bonus so it vastly reduces the time required at 0% tax to hit maximum population. I research this first as otherwise it's developed too late for the 0% tax phases. Ruslan obviously helps increase research and Traders Bazaar is essential early game to optimise income on your homeworld given it is your primary source of income. Only after that do I focus on Colonisation and the rest.

Research Split: Energy Labs first but ending up with 2/3rd Energy then the rest split between Weapons and High Tech. After Hyperdrive I upgrade High Tech to be equivalent to Energy. After Biological Workshops, upgrade so all three fields are even on Labs.

What approach do you adopt and why?

I tend to do things similarly, except I also go for the high speed construction yards wonder as well. Makes cranking out colony ships a lot faster.

As for the medicomplex wonder, it really depends on what race I'm playing. For example, Securans and Gizureans make it kinda irrelevant due to the speed at which they can pump out children, but for anything under a 21% growth rate I usually try to grab it quickly before any Ikkuro empires can (they love that thing).

I don't play on high difficulties, so the maintenance cost of these facilities don't bother me as much as I'm sure they could.

Yep good point, since I also research Accelerated Construction early game, I'll update the original post accordingly (after hyperdrive).

Agree the medicomplex wonder maybe race dependent, although it would still significantly reduce the time required at 0% tax for high growth races.

Are there any other early game research variations or improvements out there?

Pretty much have to agree with the OP. Really nothing to argue or comment on.

Of course YMMV, adjust as needed for Race, Playstyle and Mod(s), but this path should see you through most situations.

This is for a prewarp start.

DW is a realtime game so turn based strategies do not apply aside from things need to follow in progression, with a few games under your belt you will understand the timing aspect. I manually design all the types, state ship / bases, private ships /mines, I have a bare basic set of Mk1 designs saved and load them at the start of each game to base from. The following sections all link together, remember that lower end techs will take less time to complete. If you have the cash use it, I would suggest to use it on the energy section, if you get used to the timing no matter where the ruin is you should end up being on the Accelerated Construction by the time the prewarp drive is found and can then be researched, just cancel the Accelerated Construction and click on the prewarp drive and then click back on the Accelerated Construction so it is marked as the item next to be researched.

Darkspire

Weapons

Enhanced Missilies, Enhanced Beam Weapons, Armor Plating, Improved Assault Tactics, Efficient Blasters, Energy Torpedo Weapons, Improved Defense Tactics, Improved Logistics

These will give you the bare basics to defend yourself from pirates, by the time you finish Armor Plating you should have both Space Construction and Enhanced Construction finished on the energy tab allowing for the items to be fitted (you will have a max design size of 300)

Energy & Construction

Space Construction, Enhanced Construction, Shields, Advance Nuclear Fission, Energy Collection, Accelerated Construction (Bakuras Highspeed Shipyards)

HighTech & Industrial

Enhanced Resource Exploration, Enhanced commerce, Open Trade Network (Traders Bazaar), Coordinated Control, Crew Systems, medical Systems, Entertainment Systems, Structured Research, Enhanced Research (Rusan Technology Installation)

I'm sorry for digging out this thread but since it's still linked in the "guide to guides mkII" I'd rather ask here than make a new post.

Is there any convenient method of timing the research when starting prewarp? I found it incredibly hard to manage my research output capability to match the needs of my research queue. Eventually I want research to a predefined point that includes elements of 2 or 3 tech trees... say... fission reactor, warp bubble generator, size 230 ships... or... fission reactor, gerox drive, basic shields, basic armor, 300 size ships...

There's many techs early game, that require redesign of every ship and being able to bundle would be really nice - especially considering possible saves/reloads of designs at certain states - and if the latter is done w/o predefined tech bundles, one would have to match every possible tech combinations when.. say... reaching size 230 ships)

Ideally there would be a trade off between the need of immediate redesign early game to get things rolling - let's call it the timing aspect - and convenience, by which I mean minimizing the number of consecutive redesigns.

Since I like playing on tech costs of 240k+ (I often set it to 360k manually, since 480k seems a bit too slow and 240k seems a bit too fast for my taste) the need of timing research is even a bit higher. Having to wait months before being able to conveniently alter all designs just because a research tree hasn't finished the desired tech for the next big design overhaul is annoying. But rather more annoying is having to redesign 3 times.

TLDR:
Is there a convenient way of timing research to match certain points at which I'd like to upgrade my ships (or load predefined designs)?
If there is, what's your opinion about convenience here? Is one better off micromanaging research ouput or micromanaging ship designs and add every tech manually as soon as it's done researching (the latter means to me: playing w/o predefined designs or having a big number of predefined designs named by available techs)?

Thanks in advance for your opinions!

Enhanced construction and Accelerated construction are the two techs I consider critical for early game.

Enhanced gives you the 300 size ships, and accelerated lets you build the Bakuras High Speed Shipyard, which I make sure to get.