User Guide

CONTROLLING SOCIETY
CHAPTER 5
119
TECHNOLOGY
The success of your faction on Planet is judged, to a great extent, on your
ability to acquire new technology.
Scientific breakthroughs are a large part of technology advances, but they’re
not the whole story. For example, any primitive tribesman of old Earth could
hollow out a tree and make a canoe, but your faction can’t build sea-going
units until it acquires Doctrine: Flexibility. This isn’t because water works dif-
ferently on Planet, it’s because it takes a great deal of work, planning and
inspiration to set up a self-sustaining shipbuilding industry of the sort required
to produce high-tech, ocean-going vessels on command.
Many of these technologies combine a new scientific discovery with a new way
of looking at the world. The result is usually quite useful.
RESEARCH
Your faction can research only one technology at a time. When you acquire a
new tech, you begin research on your next discovery. Most technologies can
only be researched after certain other technologies—its “prerequisites”—have
already been discovered, so as you advance technologically, your options grow
and change. Your research efforts can be augmented by allocating more ener-
gy to Labs, building base laboratory facilities, and creating scientifically ori-
ented specialists in your bases (see Appendix 2: Technology Tree, p. 185, for
a list of all technologies).
BLIND RESEARCH
Normally (unless you disable the option during game setup) your research is
“blind.” You do not select a specific research goal. Instead, you are asked to
choose a research priority, and your goal is randomly selected according to that
preference. You can select multiple priorities, which increases the number of
technologies available under your preferences.
If you disable blind research, you select specific technologies to work towards.