If you want to progress through Starminer, there are two things you need to focus on. Firstly, making money, and if necessary, paying off debts. And the other is spending those funds on researching new modules to expand your mining capabilities, your fleet, and your stations.
If you’re anything like me, your ADHD-riddled brain has jumped straight into the Sandbox mode, without really giving the tutorial a second thought. While that’s fine to do, it does leave you with more questions than answers, like knowing how to research in Starminer and unlock new modules.
Researching Costs Money
Unlike other games, where research costs some kind of research points, Starminer keeps it simple. If you want to research new modules, you pay for them. Of course, that means that you need to make enough money to pay for the research in the first place.
If you’ve not got much money, simply head over to the nearest trade station or use a T2 Metal Storage module and sell whatever resources you can spare. Many of the modules you can research cost in the thousands, so you’ll need to make sure you’ve got enough cash coming in first.
Level Up
Having money isn’t enough on its own. You’ll also need to focus on leveling up, as this unlocks more items for you to research. Every time you level up, you’ll be rewarded with a new perk, as well as several new modules that become available once researched.
To level up, you need to focus on either mining and doing the standard tasks, or if you want to get XP quicker, take on as many missions as you can, as these usually give you a decent amount of XP, making it quicker to level up and therefore research new modules.
Accumulating Research Points
OK, now you’ve got money, and you’re the right level. It’s finally time to start getting research points so you can unlock some of the most advanced technology. To do this, the first thing you need to do is build a Research Lab, although they’re not cheap.
Building a Research Lab costs:
- 100 Iron
- 50 Silicones
- 10 Cobalt
- 500 Energy
While it might not seem like much, at the start of the game, that’s a lot of resources to gather. Once it’s built, as long as it is active and has someone working in it, you will start getting research points without needing to do anything else.
How to Research in Starminer
To get to the research panel, you need to first select the operations interface on the bottom left. From there, change to the research tab, where you will see a selection of new modules and upgrades to research and unlock.
Switching between the tabs, you can choose new research items from the following tabs:
- General
- Colonists
- Mining
- Industry
- Wapons
- Fleet
Of course, it’s up to you how you spend your money and unlock these items, but I have found from experience that it’s best to start by focusing on unlocking mining and energy-related modules first.
There are also Megastructures, which offer more impressive structures to your ship, as well as hangarship modules. While these both offer some impressive new upgrades, it’s probably worth focusing on getting some of the core modules upgraded to Tier 2 before worrying about researching anything too fancy.
