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The occupation of colonists can be set to research in the biodome management screen. Colonial researchers spend their time exploring their home world and solving problems. The more colonists allowed to research, the greater a colony's chance of making a research discovery. Discoveries are bonuses that will remain with that colony forever. Every colony has its own, independent list of discoveries, even if they're owned by the same character. These are the possible research discoveries that can occur on a colony:

Research Discoveries and Effects
Discovery	Effect
Weather Prediction	Better reproduction
Geothermal Refrigeration	2x Organics harvest
Industrial Complex	Double Flak Cannon Production
*Military Tradition	Double Military Workforce
Native Plants	2x Medicine harvest
Advanced Architecture	50% faster construction
Advanced Engineering	2x Equipment harvest
Spectroscopes	2x Uranium harvest
*Commodities Market	Liquadate Resources
Drilling	2x Oil harvest
Ecological Equilibrium	Reduces pollution
Advanced Aerodynamics	Double Missile Production
Superconductors	More research output
Bacteria Farming	2x Anaerobes harvest
Spice Mining	2x Spice Harvest
Channel Descrambling	Improves Morale

The symbol "2x" means double. If you harvest 0 before the research you still harvest 0 after.

Researching takes a bit of luck. You need to set your colonists to work on research, and then give them a day or two to come up with something. There is an element of chance to how soon a discovery will be made, but the more research output the colony has, the greater the chances of making a discovery with each passing hour.

• Commodities market allows you to sell any resource in the refinery at a reduced selling price.
• Military Tradition doubles the effectiveness of a colony's defense. For example, a colony with its military workforce set to 25% would defend itself as though it were set to 50%. Remember that the maximum defense strength for any colony is 2,500 colonists, so with Military Tradition and a 5000 population colony, you would only need to set the military to 25% to get the maximum defense strength. This discovery does not effect the Weapons Factory.