Buy a tech node
Spend discovery on the tech tree and put a new set of parts in your hangar palette for good.
You need this whenever a rocket wants a part you have never seen in the palette: a separator, a heat shield, a landing strut, a bigger engine. You also need it to found a Launch Pad on the Moon or on Mars.
- You are in the shared world, not sandbox. Sandbox shows the tree your account really holds, but nothing on it can be bought there.
- You are signed in. Off the network the card says so and the button will not tap.
- You hold the discovery the node costs, or the credits on the two nodes priced in credits.
- You already own every node it requires, and your Research Centre reaches its tier.
Steps
- Open the Space Center. From the hangar, tap Center.
- Go to Earth's strip and tap the Research Centre. It stands on Earth only, so if the tabs along the top have put you on another world, tap Earth first. The building's sheet opens below the strip.
- Tap Open tech tree on the sheet. The tree fills the screen, with your discovery and credits in the top right corner.
- Find the node. Drag the grid with one finger and pinch to zoom, or tap Fit in the header to pull back to the whole tree at once.
After Fit, every node is on screen. The tier bands are the three vertical stripes. - Tap the node. Its card opens along the bottom: the node's name, what it does, the line "Unlocks:" naming the parts it sells, its tier, and a Requires list with a tick or a cross beside each thing it wants first.
- Tap the green button, labelled with the price. It reads Unlock followed by the cost, for example 40 discovery or 20,000 credits. The line under it reads "Unlocking…" while the purchase goes through.
What you should see
The tile turns green and its label changes to "open". The lines out of it light up green, the figure in the top right corner drops by what you paid, and the card's button reads Unlocked with "These parts are in your palette." under it. Tap Close twice to get back to the hangar and the new parts are in their category drawers.
A node that opened a world says "Its pad stands at the space center." instead, and that world now has a tab of its own on the Space Center and a row in the hangar's destination picker.
Why the button won't tap
The line under the card always says why. Each of these is the game's own wording:
| What the card says | What it means |
|---|---|
| "Needs Staging first." | You do not own a node this one requires. It names them all. Buy those first; the Requires list above shows which have a tick and which a cross. |
| "Needs the One Small Step achievement first." | The node wants a feat as well as the nodes above it. Only the Lunar Pad and the Mars Pad do this, and each wants a landing on the world it opens. |
| "Tier 2 opens with Research Centre level 2." | The node's whole band is closed. The button has turned into that extension, priced and bought right there, so you do not have to go anywhere else. |
| "40 discovery more needed." | You are short on price alone. Where both are short the line names both: "15 discovery and 1,500 credits more needed." |
| "Offline — the server keeps your progress." | You are not signed in. Nothing can be bought until you are. |
| "Sandbox: the tree stays as the shared world has it. Leave sandbox to unlock." | You are flying in sandbox. Switch back to the shared world in Settings to spend anything. |