The Crust Research Guide: Science Points, Branches and What to Unlock First

Branches

ThreeFundamental, engineering, social

Colour names

UnofficialCommunity mapping only

Points

AccumulateUnused points flagged

Purchase

SupportedCRUST store

Install cost

SeparateCredits, per vehicle

Press Space

Pause in placePlan the next step

Three branches, and the colours you actually searched for

The most common way people ask about this system is by colour — “blue research”, “green research”, “no green science”. The colours are real shorthand, but they are not the game’s vocabulary. Official text is consistent and unambiguous about the branch names:

“Increased the cost of late-game research in the fundamental and engineering branches by 2–4%.”

“Increased the production-automation reward in fundamental, engineering, and social points by 20%.”

“Reduced the cost of some research in fundamental and engineering science points, increased in social science.”

So there are three branches, and they are fundamental, engineering and social. The word “branch” is the developers’ own.

The colours come from elsewhere. The community wiki’s Research System page maps them explicitly — Orange Science = Engineering, Blue Science = Fundamental, Green Science = Social — and that page’s own research-cost templates are written with parameters like bluesci and greensci, which is why the colour vocabulary spread.

We are giving you both vocabularies and being clear about which is which. Use the official names when you read patch notes; use the colours only as a translation key for community material. If your research panel labels a branch differently from the mapping above, trust the panel.

The same community page also describes what each branch is for, which is the more useful part:

That framing is consistent with official usage — the conveyor tier researches, for example, sit in engineering, and an official note says slag-processing recipes require research “in the engineering research tree.” Power and vehicles sitting together in fundamental also explains why an Electric Pillar connection research is a research rather than a building.

Where science points actually come from

Seven sources are documented in official text. Listing them together is worth doing because most guides cover two or three and leave players short of points without understanding why.

1. Science labs in your base. The named modules are the Fundamental Science Lab, the Social Science Lab, an AI Science Center added in 1.0, and a Private Laboratory that appears in story content. Power consumption was added to the fundamental and social labs in an April 2026 update — before that they were effectively free to run.

2. Outposts. Points generated out on the moon are substantial enough that the developers tuned them twice: an official note added “a tutorial on generating Science Points at an outpost,” and an earlier balance change “Reduced the average science point generation at outposts by roughly 25%.” The outpost is a research source as well as a resource source.

3. Story missions. Mission rewards are tracked per branch and get rebalanced. One balance note records that the reward for the underground oxide mining mission had “fundamental and engineering science points increased by 25%, social points removed.”

4. Contracts and expeditions. Update 3 lists “Automation of contracts, expeditions, and unit production” as a highlight, and a research exists that lets a Multi-Storage automatically supply contracts and expeditions with exactly the resources they call for.

5. Relationships with organisations. Update 1.0.12 “Increased the amount of Science Points awarded for reaching a new level of relations with organizations.” This is the most easily overlooked source in the game — it rewards diplomacy rather than production.

6. Research anomalies. Update 0.99.88 records reductions to both the number of science anomalies in orbital generation and their total points, which confirms anomalies as a real income stream that the developers were trimming.

7. Buying them. There is a purchase route: official notes reference a “buy science points” button in the research tree, a “CRUST Solution Science Points store” that received new speed-related research options in Update 1.0.12, and a repeatable research for converting science points into credits added in April 2026. So the flow runs both ways — you can buy points, and you can sell them.

And a bonus tie-in worth naming: automation itself pays research points. An official balance note “Increased the production-automation reward in fundamental, engineering, and social points by 20%.” A well-automated base is a better-funded one.

Why “what should I research first” has no fixed answer

This is the question the page exists to answer, and the honest answer is that the developers have deliberately avoided settling it. Their own patch history shows the research map being moved, not optimised:

• “Sped up progression through the research tree.”
• “Research map changes: the Medical Center is now researched after the Pharmaceutical Factory.”
• “Changed the research positions of the Medical Center and the Pharmaceutical Factory.”

Two separate notes about the same pair of buildings, in opposite directions across different updates. That is a map in motion.

What you can extract from the history is a signal about intent, because cost reductions are the closest thing to a priority statement a developer can make. The June 2026 update cut a specific seven-item set by 10–25%:

“Reduced the cost of starting researches: Regolith Extractor, Regolith Refinery, Rolling Mill, Parts Factory, High-Voltage Transformer, Medium Solar Panel, Mk1 Conveyor Belt by 10-25%.”

Read that list as a curriculum. It is mining, first-tier refining, first-tier manufacturing, power distribution, basic generation and the first conveyor tier — in other words, exactly the technology a base needs to become self-sustaining. Since then, Update 1.0.12 cut a much longer list, again weighted toward the same foundations plus storage and logistics: Large Storage, Large Bulk Storage, the Cargo Dock, the Programmable Conveyor Distributor, the Small Vehicle Assembly Facility, the Robot manufacturing technology and Roads.

The practical conclusion is a pattern rather than an order: the cheaper a technology has recently become, the more likely the developers intend it to be part of your early path. Everything else is downstream of what your map, your difficulty and your colony layout happen to need.

Researching is not applying

This is a small rule with an outsized effect on how the game feels, and an official note states it without hedging:

“Applying researched upgrades to rovers, cargo trucks, and rockets now requires credits. You can upgrade rovers and cargo trucks via their interfaces, and rockets at the Launch Station.”

Before that change, research alone gave you the upgrade. After it, research gives you the right to buy the upgrade, and each vehicle charges separately.

The consequence is that a research can be complete, paid for, and still produce no visible change in the field — because you have not installed it on the individual vehicles. The same logic explains a separate detail in the patch history: an official fix addresses rover upgrades failing to apply if they were installed before the vehicle left the base. Installation is a physical step, performed somewhere, on something.

The Tech Center belongs in this story too, though its role has been confused by the game’s own renaming. An official update notes that “The Technology Center module has been updated; it provides temporary upgrades that can be bought for credits,” and the same module is referred to elsewhere as the Tech Center, where its “core functionality” is buying “temporary boosts for your base” that affect “production, logistics, and personnel” — including a boost that raises power output. It also sells a research-speed boost.

Two properties matter. These boosts expire — the developers’ own aside is “Just don’t forget to scale up your power infrastructure eventually, as boosts do expire”. And their values move: an official note “Research speed boost from the Tech Center reduced: 20% → 15%.”

Reading the research interface

The research screen has been the target of a series of quality-of-life changes, and knowing what it can do saves real time:

• You can pause and speed up from inside it. An official note describes the research menu being changed so that “You can also pause the game directly in this window to calmly plan your next research steps, or speed it up and watch the progress of newly researched technologies.” Planning research without leaving the screen is the intended workflow.
• It shows game speed, not just pause. “Improved the game speed indicator in the research window. It now shows the current game speed in addition to pause.”
• There is a pause indicator on the tree, added in a separate patch, so a paused game is visible from inside the tree.
• It scrolls further than it used to — “Increased the scrollable area in the research tree.”
• Empty research slots are stated, not implied. The interface displays “No research selected” on the left when nothing is queued, which is the message to look for if you have not realised a slot is idle.
• Unused points are flagged with an exclamation mark in the Research menu.
• Repeatable research exists at the end of the tree. One patch fixes “an issue where repeatable research at the end of the tech tree would complete instantly” — so late-game repeatables are a designed feature, not a bug, once they behave.
• There are three library-style repeatables that matter: converting science points into credits, and the auto-sell/auto-buy capacity research lines.

What the interface does not give you is a shortcut past the gate on the big rockets. The CRUST and UNIVERSE rockets have story requirements, and official notes show those requirements being documented and fixed: “Updated the story requirement descriptions for unlocking the CRUST and UNIVERSE rockets,” and a fix adding a description for the third requirement of the CRUST rocket research.