Ascension Research

Ascension research is the Star Trek Fleet Command research tree that hands out ship blueprints, officer shards and station upgrades you may have skipped, and it runs on Ascension Particles. The tree has 112 projects gated between R&D Department 18 and R&D 50 (or Shipyard 26 to 50), and maxing all of it takes 537.8K Ascension Particles. Ascension Particles come from the Federation, Klingon and Romulan faction stores.

Ascension Particles: where to get them and how many you need

Ascension Particles are used to unlock and advance research in the Ascension tree, and nothing else. They are obtained from the Federation, Klingon or Romulan faction stores, so check those three stores whenever your faction reputation opens new tiers. 93 of the 112 projects cost Ascension Particles; the rest are paid only in standard resources and faction credits.

This is where the 537.8K particles go if you max everything:

The officer Recruit nodes take by far the biggest share, followed by the Ship Commission nodes and the Advanced Maneuvers lines. If particles are the limit, spend them on the Ship Commission nodes for hulls you actually plan to build, then on the Recruit nodes for officers you use.

What Ascension research does

The heart of the tree is its 33 Ship Commission nodes, which reward blueprints for hulls from the Augur, B’rel, D3 and D4 up to the Enterprise NX-01, the Vindicator and the U.S.S. Enterprise-A. Around them sit Recruit nodes that reward officer shards (from Christopher Pike and Marlena Moreau up to Benjamin Sisko and Khan), Advanced Maneuvers lines that raise one ship’s damage against player ships, Isolytic Training lines that raise one ship’s isolytic damage against hostiles, and Prosperity lines that raise Parsteel, Tritanium and Dilithium generator, vault and warehouse capacity.

Later nodes go further: Bolstered Station research for base defense, Cargo Protection for the B’Chor, U.S.S. Hydra and Vorta Vor, Artifact Restoration for Kirk’s Phaser Rifle, Guinan’s Magus Weapon and the Kir’shara, the Artifact Hall and Command Center commissions, an Officer Preset Expansion, the Ex-Borg faction contact and the Gabriel Lorca Fleet Commander. Treat it as a completion tree first and a power tree second.

Rapid Ascension and Operations 40

Rapid Ascension grants Ascend Keys to advance to Operations 40. It unlocks at R&D 39 after Recruit: Five of Eleven, Recruit: Six of Eleven and Recruit: Khan, and it costs 610 Ascension Particles, 4.5B Parsteel, 989M Dilithium and one Ascension Commission Approval. When your server is eligible, you receive a gift containing the Ascension Commission Approvals needed to unlock it. Several other nodes (the Vi’dar, Stella, Borg Cube, NX-01 and Vindicator commissions, among others) also need a one-off Commission Approval item.

Ships you can get from Ascension research

Every Ship Commission node, sorted by the building level that unlocks it. Where a hull tier comes in Federation, Klingon and Romulan versions, all three cost the same apart from which faction’s credits they take.

Every Ascension research

All 112 research projects, sorted by the building level that unlocks them (most gate on your R&D Department, some on the Shipyard, and nodes with no building gate are listed first). Cost to max is the full resource total across every level. Research time is the base time before your research-speed bonuses, which cut it heavily in play, so treat it as a relative gauge between projects rather than a real-world clock.

Related research guides

Ascension is one of several research trees. The research guide lists them all, and the Ex-Borg Research guide covers the research tree of the Ex-Borg faction that Faction Contact: Ex-Borg unlocks.