take up Officers. You also have a Military Rank, which is expressed in Honour points. You score Honour by building, researching, earning tribute(!), capturing ships and winning battles. As you start to progress through Military Ranks, your population cap is raised... ..... .... being a specialised Capital Ship, you need to seriously invest in a Capital Module before you can even think of building any techs, and then there's a long and protracted building and teching tree to work through. Its important to build the right add-ons as well to unlock the techs you want. For example, The Station is your fleet's Achilles Heel - losing it can seriously cripple you, and looking after it becomes a high priority. There are three levels of research you can do, each have their own Module Slot in the Research Station; they're analogous to the research "Tiers" you find in a WarCraft clone or in Dawn of War's tech trees. Any research you do scores you Research points. However, to unlock the Science Division and Engineering modules, you must have accumulated sufficient Research to start with, or at least sufficient Honour and Population. so there's no rushing up tech trees either; you must get out and engage with your opponent and spend some time researching all your basic techs before you can build half a dozen Destroyers to smash your opponent with. Each level of teching requires a lot of prerequisites, and its not hard to drive yourself spare trying to find or