Dyson Sphere Program Wiki
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Research is an essential part of Dyson Sphere Program. It is divided into technologies that allow the unlocking of new components, buildings, and production processes; and upgrades which improve the Icarus mecha, construction capabilities, the Dyson Sphere, combat, and transport infrastructure. The in-game tutorials guide the plater through the basics; research can either be done manually with items in the inventory, or automatically through the use of the Matrix Lab.

Overview[]

The process of research is performed by selection in the technology tree UI. It is possible to enqueue multiple techs to research, up to a maximum of 8 (including the current research). O ne thing that is not apparent from the tech tree or the tutorials is that many techs have "hidden" requirements. For instance, Energy Circuit (Lv1) doesn't show any dependencies on the tree, but if you attempt to research it at the beginning of the game, you will see the message: "Require [ Mecha core-level1 ]". These hidden requirements only show up once all the regular dependencies are satisfied. On this wiki, they are noted with a citation.

Research consumes items, typically types of matrix cubes starting from the blue colored Electromagnetic Matrix. Apart from the Icarus mecha replicator, matrixes are produced in a Matrix Lab which can be configured between two modes, toggling to produce matrixes. Most recipes take two input components. Some of the later and more advanced matrixes have longer crafting times that require scaling infrastructure to maintain production rates, but labs in either mode can be vertically stacked if provided with a sufficient amount of sorter input and output transfer capacities. There may be small modifications of the input and output quantities which can affect the related ratios by doubling or halving. Finally, the Universe Matrix requires the combination of all other types of matrix and Antimatter.

Mechanics[]

Every technology requires a certain amount of "hashes" to complete. Effectively, hashes equate to total volume of research completed. This can vary from 3600 all the way up to 415M hashes or more with infinite resources.

To generate these hashes, sets of items must be processed - these are usually matrixes, but some early researches require basic components; and notably they may not be single items, a set may range from 5 items in one research, to 60 of the same item in another type of research. These items can be placed either in the Icarus itself or in a Matrix Lab as "research facilities," and each facility can processes one set of items over one second. When active, the facility then produces 60 hashes per game tick and there are 60 ticks/second; overall research production is 3600 hashes per set of items per second, with more facilities increasing the ratio of the amount of items that can be used.

However the game's interface also displays the total number of items needed to complete the research, which is usually much more important. Using the formula:
items_per_set = total_items * 3600 / hash_needed,
then you can see how many items are needed in an individual group, which has implications for the consumption of your labs. For instance, if items_per_set is 20, then for a research rate of 180 hash/second you need:
180 hash/second * 20/3600 (items/hash) = 1 item/sec = 60 items/minute
However, if items_per_set were only 2, you'd only need a tenth as much item production for the same research rate.

As mentioned earlier, values of items_per_set can vary wildly, from as little as 2 for some techs to as much as 60. But it tends to stay around 20 for most regular technologies.

Alternative example[]

Or, far more simply, you can divide the required number of cubes by the total hash volume giving you hash per cube, multiply this by the lab hash rate of 60/s and you have the number of cubes per second for each lab

for example, Magnetic Levitation requires 400 blue and 100 red with a total hash of 72k

400 / 72k * 60 = 0.333 (⅓) blue cubes per second (1 blue cube every 3 seconds for each lab)

100 / 72k * 60 = 0.0833 (¹⁄₁₂) red cubes per second (1 red cube every 12 seconds for each lab)

Trivia[]

List of technologies[]

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