Every faction has its own tree, and almost everything comes out of it: which units you may build at all, how strong your towers get, how good everything already in the field is.
Research first, then build
From barracks, vehicle factory and mech factory you can build ONE combat unit from the first second — the cheapest each can make. The economy is never locked: harvesters, MCV, transports and repair vehicles are always available, and every barracks has its helper alongside its fighter. The late buildings fall outside the rule: the experimental works, the titan hall and their kind offer nothing at all without research; there the building itself is half the price. And a landing pad first gives you eyes or a pure interceptor, not an aircraft that hits the ground. Everything else sits in the tree. The button does not disappear: it stays on the bar from the start, greyed out with a lock mark, and its tooltip names the missing research and its price. Clicking it queues exactly that research — in that same factory's queue, which builds nothing else meanwhile. If you want to research and produce at once, you need a second one. What an opponent puts on the field therefore reveals, from minute one, where their research went.
Unlocks build on one another
It is not a flat menu but a trunk with branches. The trunk is the combat-class ladder: no medium tank before the light one, no heavy before the medium. Anti-air, indirect fire and demolition branch off where they belong by class — so you need not buy anti-air just to reach the heavy tank. Click a unit that sits deep in a branch and the game does not queue the unreachable end node but the next step you can actually research; the tooltip names it. Two clicks means two steps. The exceptions are the vehicle halls of Collective and Bloom: there the anti-air sits as its own stub beside the trunk, and those two buildings have two roots instead of one.
| Faction | Nodes | Forks | Unit unlocks | Defence |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Steel Union | 628 | 88 | 21 | 34 |
| The Scrap Legion | 632 | 87 | 24 | 34 |
| The Aegis Order | 619 | 90 | 25 | 30 |
| The Collective | 550 | 76 | 18 | 26 |
| The Blight | 493 | 66 | 16 | 26 |
| The Orbitals | 355 | 52 | 16 | 22 |
Instant and for all
A completed upgrade is instantly in every unit you own — including those long since in the field. There is no second step where you upgrade them one by one. It is priced accordingly.
Every unit has its own forks
The unlock is only the start: nearly every unit has its own branch with two or three hard forks. At a fork you pick exactly ONE exit — and each carries a real drawback, not just an upside. The rifleman, for instance, chooses between a precision rifle (more range and damage, far slower to reload) and a machine gun (much higher rate of fire, shorter and less accurate). Behind each exit sit two or three further upgrades that extend that path — or soften its drawback. Switching is allowed and costs full price; whatever sat behind the abandoned side expires with it.
One tree per faction
No node belongs to more than one faction. The trees differ not only in numbers but in shape: long straight chains, irregular stubs, few but deep branches. Most branches need the tech center plus the matching building — vehicle research wants a vehicle factory.
Towers research too
Defensive structures have their own tab. Two root nodes apply to everything you have placed; below them each structure carries its own short chain ending in a fork. You can only research what you have built: a flak tower's branch opens once a flak tower stands. Towers gain experience as well — at a quarter of a unit's pace, and only in damage and armour, never in range. A tower that has held for a whole match is not the one you just placed.
The fork at the end
At the end of a line stands an either-or: only one of two options is ever active. You may switch, but that erases the earlier choice. This is why one match is not the same as the last — and why what your opponent researched tells you something about their plan.