Outlaw Research

Outlaw research is a mid-game faction branch, unlocked from R&D Department level 19, built around the Botany Bay, cost efficiency, and staying alive while you mine. This page lists every outlaw research with what it does, the Operations level it unlocks at, the number of levels, the cost to max, the research time, and prerequisites.

What Outlaw research does

The tree does three useful things. Cost-efficiency research, including repair cost efficiency and plutonium and component bartering, lowers your running costs, which is the steady value here. Warp and getaway research, such as empty-cargo warp speed and Apex Getaway Pilots, helps miners jump out before a raider lands, which is the whole point of the Outlaw playstyle. Defense-platform research for platform hull and shield health, plus the Botany Bay lines, matter if you defend a base or fly the Botany Bay itself. The first-round piercing bonus when defending is a niche PvP tool. Push cost efficiency and getaway warp first, then the defense-platform lines if you actually defend.

Every Outlaw research

All 70 research projects, sorted by unlock level (most projects gate on your R&D Department; some use Operations or another building). 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.