Maintained by The Center
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To invest in research you need to get so called research units. Depending on the industry you want to get higher quality level in, you need to get the right research units. Go to the RESEARCH screen to see what research units are needed for which products. You can obtain research units either by getting a laboratory building, or buying them from other players.
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Your research progress for your products can be found in the Warehouse.
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The research is divided into each research type: Plant, Energy, Mining, Electronics, Breeding, Chemistry, Software, Automotive, Fashion, Aerospace, and Materials.
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The above image shows the products that fall under Materials Research. The number in the (0) is how many research units you have of that research type. Any product that shows yellow stars is how much quality you have researched per product. The above image shows Q3 for Carbon Composite and Q2 for heat Shield. The rest of the products that do not have stars are Q0. There are progress bars at the bottom of each product that show you how far along that product is until the next quality is reached.
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Going into Tools you can see the following screen:
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Once you
To get to quality 1 in Tools; you need 12 patents. (0 patents out of 12)
You can enter how many research units to use to do research in the text box. Then press “Apply Research.”
If, you don’t have research for that specific research unit you can use the blue link at the bottom to take you to the exchange for that research. In the example above you can see the current research price on the exchange is $248.
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Once you’ve obtained research units, you can try to get your research patented by using them in the RESEARCH screen. This varies, but you can expect approximately eight ( 8 ) research points getting your company a single (1) patent. You can imagine rolling a dice for each research points, getting a patent each time you get a six.
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It makes sense to invest in research once your company gets larger (reaches about $1,300,000 in company value or 3,000 employees). The larger your company, the more sense high quality products make. Having a strong CTO on retainer is worth it only if you are getting Q3 research or higher.