Technology

See also: Technology (Strategy card)

Category: Rules

Players obtain technology in the form of technology cards.

Technologies provide players with powerful abilities and allow players to upgrade their units. Each player has an identical deck of technology cards that they may look through at any time, as well as 2 faction specific technology cards.

Technology Types

Basic Technologies

There are four basic colors of technology. A technology’s color is indicated by a green, red, blue, or yellow symbol located on the lower-right corner of the card. Players use these symbols when researching technology.

Biotic Technologies

Propulsion Technologies

Cybernetic Technologies

Warfare Technologies

See Starting Technology for a list of basic technology that each faction starts the game with.

Faction Technologies

Faction technologies are special technologies unique to specific factions. Like regular technologies, they are each one of the four types and have a certain number of prerequisites. Faction-specific Unit Upgrades are also faction technologies but are included in the "Unit Upgrade Technologies" section.

Unit Upgrade Technologies

Unit Upgrade Technologies allow players to research technologies that directly improve their units. These technologies often have multiple color prerequisites.

Obtaining Technology

Research

The predominant way of gaining technology is by researching technology. Players may research technology through use of the Primary or Secondary Abilities of the “Technology” strategy card, certain Action Cards, or abilities. Any time a player researches a technology, they must satisfy the prerequisites.

Once a player researches technology (i.e. pays the cost and satisfies the prerequisites), they gain that technology and place it face up in their play area. It is received unexhausted and may be played at any time after gain.

Prerequisites

Prerequisites are printed as a column on the lower-left side of each technology card and contain one or more symbols that correspond to the four technology types. Some technologies have no prerequisites and can be researched without owning any technology.

To satisfy a technology’s prerequisites, a player must own a matching technology for each prerequisite symbol on the card they wish to research. (For example researching "Light/Wave Deflector" requires 3 blue technologies owned prior to being able to be researched.) Unit upgrade technologies do not satisfy prerequisites when researching technology. 

Technology Specialty Planets

If a player controls a planet that has a technology specialty symbol, they may exhaust that planet when researching technology to ignore a prerequisite that matches that technology specialty. Players may exhaust planets for their technology specialty or for their resources/influence, but not for both.

Gain

Certain effects and abilities may instruct a player to Gain technology. In such circumstances, technology can be obtained without considering prerequisites.

It is worth noting that players gain a technology they have researched after they research it.

Technology Reference

The following section contains all the technologies in the game in table format for easy reference.

Level 0/1/2/3/4 corresponds to the number of Prerequisite technologies required before the technology in question is able to be researched.

(Ω) Represents Omega Technology released with the Codex. These updates are intended as replacements for the originals.

Unit Upgrade Technology

(*) Indicates Unit Upgrade faction technology

Faction Technology

Does not include unit upgrade faction technology