Research and Development

You may be looking for a list of craftable items with recipes.

Research and Development (R&D) is the crafting system of Star Trek Online. It uses R&D Materials to create R&D Components, both of which are in turn needed to craft various items, including "tech upgrade kits" that can be used to improve already existing items. The R&D system unlocks for all players once they reach level 15 with an automatically assigned mission “First Creation”.

Schools[]

There are currently eight R&D schools plus two special schools without levels. Each normal school has 20 levels and offers a range of items to fabricate. An increasing R&D level improves the chance that the crafting of a high quality item of that school is successful. In addition, each school has a 20 hour Fleet Research Daily R&D task that provides the player with 5,000 crafting school XP.

Research and Development Schools
School	Craftable items	Trait[1]
Beams	Beam Arrays, Dual Beam Banks, Beam consoles Special: Omni-Directional Beam Arrays
Cannons	Cannons, Dual Cannons, Dual Heavy Cannons, Turrets, Cannon consoles Special: Wide Arc Dual Heavy Cannons
Engineering	Engineering Consoles, Body Armor, Impulse Engines, Singularity Cores, Matter-Antimatter Warp Cores Special: Aegis Hyper-Impulse Engines, Conductive RCS Accelerator
Ground Weapons	Ground weapons Special: TR-116B Rifle
Kits and Modules	Kits and Modules Special: Passive Kit Modules
Projectiles	Torpedo Launchers, Mine Launchers, Torpedo & Mine consoles Special: Particle Emission Plasma Torpedo Launcher
Science	Deflector Dishes, Secondary Deflectors, Science Consoles Special: Aegis Deflector Array, Exotic Particle Field Exciter
Shields	Ship Shields, Personal Shields Special: Aegis Covariant Shield Array, Hyper-Capacitor Shield Array
Officer Training	Training Manuals	n/a
Special Projects	Omega Tech Upgrades and other special projects for time-limited events	n/a
Aegis	Aegis Space Set	n/a

Ingredients[]

If you have the R&D Materials on hand, you can fabricate a wide range of Components and equipment for you and your ship.

Materials[]

Materials are the basic ingredients for all R&D tasks. They are rewarded by scanning nodes, Duty Officer assignments, most PvE queue missions, as well as Research and Development Packs.

Research and Development Materials
	Common	Uncommon	Rare	Very Rare	Ultra Rare
Minerals
Gases
Particle
Technology

Components[]

Components are non-equipable items that are fabricated from materials. They solely serve as further ingredients for certain R&D tasks.

Research and Development Components
School	Common		Uncommon		Rare		Very Rare
Beams
Cannons
Engineering
Ground Weapons
Kits and Modules
Projectiles
Science
Shields

Duty officers[]

In addition to materials and components, crafting an item will also require a duty officer. Quality of slotted duty officer will increase the total crafting skill that improves the chance of getting better quality item or it provides bonus components.

• Common duty officer adds +0 Crafting Skill
• Uncommon duty officer adds +5 Crafting Skill
• Rare duty officer adds +15 Crafting Skill
• Very Rare duty officer adds +30 Crafting Skill
• Ultra Rare duty officer adds an unspecified amount of Crafting Skill ("Current Skill" added is shown as 0 - same as for Common quality duty officers, however success chance probabilities match those when using Very Rare officers, implying +30)

Crafting skill can be further improved by Skill Catalysts and leveling up skill level of the relevant school. Higher crafting skill results in higher probability of a critical success outcome that will give better rewards.

Non-special items:

Regular or non-special items need duty officers with the appropriate specialization before crafting can commence. A Duty officer's R&D school specialization (if available) is not important when crafting these regular items. The tables below show which specialization is needed for which type of item.

Item		Duty officer
Beam Consoles		Technician
Beam Weapons		Energy Weapons Officer
Cannon Consoles		Technician
Cannon Weapons		Energy Weapons Officer
Components (Common, Uncommon, Rare)		Fabrication Engineer
Components (Very Rare)		Matter-Antimatter Specialist
Deflector Dishes		Deflector Officer
Engineering Consoles		Maintenance Engineer
Ground Armor		Security Officer
Ground consumables - Hypo, Power Cell, Shield Charge		Diagnostic Engineer
Ground consumable - Nanoenergy Cell		Energy Weapons Officer
Ground Weapons		Assault Squad Officer
Impulse Engines		Systems Engineer
Kit Frames		Quartermaster
Kit Modules		Quartermaster
Mine Launchers		Armory Officer
Personal Shields		Assault Squad Officer
Projectile Consoles		Security Officer
Research projects		Research Lab Scientist
Science Consoles		Deflector Officer Maintenance Engineer
Singularity Cores		Warp Theorist
Space and Ground consumables - Rare Batteries, Reactive Armor Catalysts		Fabrication Engineer
Space consumables - Auxiliary Battery, Engine Battery		Deflector Officer [1] Warp Theorist [2]
Space consumable - Shield Battery		Systems Engineer [3] Warp Theorist [4]
Space consumable - Weapons Battery		Explosives Expert [5] Technician [6]
Space Shields		Shield Distribution Officer
Tech Upgrades		Research Lab Scientist
Torpedo Launchers		Projectile Weapons Officer
Warp Cores		Warp Core Engineer

Duty officer		Item
Armory Officer		Mine Launchers
Assault Squad Officer		Ground Weapons, Personal Shields
Deflector Officer		Deflector Dishes, Science Consoles, Space consumables - Auxiliary Battery, Engine Battery [1]
Diagnostic Engineer		Ground consumables - Hypo, Power Cell, Shield Charge
Energy Weapons Officer		Beam/Cannon Weapons, Ground consumable - Nanoenergy Cell
Explosives Expert		Space consumable - Weapons Battery [2]
Fabrication Engineer		Components (Common, Uncommon, Rare), Space and Ground consumables - Rare Batteries, Reactive Armor Catalysts
Maintenance Engineer		Engineering Consoles, Science Consoles
Matter-Antimatter Specialist		Components (Very Rare)
Projectile Weapons Officer		Torpedo Launchers
Quartermaster		Kit Modules, Kit Frames
Research Lab Scientist		Research projects, Tech Upgrades
Security Officer		Ground Armor, Projectile Consoles
Shield Distribution Officer		Space Shields
Systems Engineer		Impulse Engines, Space consumable - Shield Battery [3]
Technician		Beam/Cannon Consoles, Space consumable - Weapons Battery [4]
Warp Core Engineer		Warp Cores
Warp Theorist		Singularity Cores, Space consumables - Auxiliary Battery, Engine Battery, Shield Battery [5]

Special items

To craft a level 15 special item, a duty officer will need to have an R&D school specialization which corresponds to the school department it can be found in, except for Aegis items which require "Aegis R&D specialist". Specializations listed in the table above do not matter for special items, only their R&D school is important.

Some sources of duty officers with R&D school specializations: Fleet system - Krenim duty officers from Fleet Research Lab (random R&D School), and 23rd Century Duty Officers from Fleet Station K-13 (specific R&D school). Lock Box packs - [Xindi Duty Officer (Duty Officer)], [Kobali Engineering Corps Veterans], [Krenim Temporal Specialist (Duty Officer)]. Duty officer assignment - "Request r&d assistance".

See more:

• Duty officers by R&D school
• List of duty officers by R&D school specialty

Task Slots[]

To start a task, the captain must have an empty task slot. Each captain has from 1 to 6 task slots that they obtain for completing the following goals, in any order:

• 1 is unlocked with the R&D System by reaching captain level 15
• 1 is unlocked by raising any school to Level 2
• 1 is unlocked by raising any school to Level 4
• 1 is unlocked by raising at least three schools to Level 5
• 1 is unlocked by raising any school to Level 15
• 1 is unlocked by purchasing a slot from Fleet Research Lab that has Tier III Research unlocked

Skill[]

The crafting system is skill based; you gain permanent skill points by leveling a school. As your skill level increases you gain access to more items and have a higher chance to achieve a critical success outcome that gives better rewards. Additional temporary skill points boost is available from one-use Catalysts and higher quality Duty Officers.

Level Curve[]

Skill Catalysts[]

There are certain items that allow you to increase your skill when crafting an item. This will increase the probability of a critical success outcome that will give better rewards.

• [Catalyst: +10 Skill Rating]
• [Catalyst: +25 Skill Rating]
• [Catalyst: +50 Skill Rating]

Crafting Items[]

Items can be crafted by opening the Duty Officer interface and selecting the "R&D" tab. Selecting a school reveals a list of craftable components and items. Selecting an item allows players to configure the mark of the item and the variation (e.g. Energy type for weapons). Components required depend on the parameters of the item selected, with higher mark items requiring more components. Duty Officers of varying specialisations are also required to initiate a craft.

Each item has a difficulty rating, which varies based on the parameters selected. This is compared with the player's skill rating to return the odds of returning Common, Uncommon, Rare, Very Rare and for special items Ultra Rare items. Components have a chance of returning a critical, which triples the number of items created. Crafting skill can be boosted by using higher quality Duty Officers, or using consumable "Catalysts".

Items require time to craft, ranging from seconds to up to 20 hours. The crafting school XP generated by each task varies depending on the duration. Tasks can be completed early for a cost in Dilithium.

Critical Outcome[]

When running Research and Development tasks, it is possible to achieve a Critical outcome for most of them. Here are the tasks with a possible Critical outcome, and the comparison of reward given in case of the non-Critical and Critical outcomes:

Components and Consumables[]

While Critical outcome reward will be the same for all components (i.e. awarding 3 components instead of 1), its probability will be different. It will depend on the difficulty of the component crafting task.

For all consumables both Critical outcome reward (awarding 2 batches of consumables instead of 1), and its probability is the same across all crafted consumables. The probability is also the same as for component crafting tasks with the difficulty of 50.

There are 5 different difficulties when crafting components or consumables:

Task	Difficulty	Description	Components
Component	10	All Common rarity components
Component 2 XP	20	Uncommon rarity components awarding 2 XP per crafted component
Component 3 XP	30	Uncommon rarity components awarding 3 XP per crafted component
Component 4 XP	40	Rare rarity components awarding 4 XP per crafted component
Consumable Comp./Comp. 6/240/360 XP	50	All crafted Consumables Rare rarity components awarding 6 XP per crafted component All Very Rare rarity components	See: Consumables

Critical Chances[]

The table below shows in-game probabilities in percent of obtaining a Critical outcome for all the possible R&D tasks and "current skill" combinations:

STO Crafting Critical Chances Table

Accolades[]

• Research and Development General Accolades

Notes[]

• Materials and components do not need to be in the player's inventory to be able to craft an item; items stored in the bank are also used seamlessly. This does NOT apply to the Account Bank.
• Each crafting school has several Accolades and Titles that are unlocked by progressing through different levels of that school.
• The current crafting system introduced with Season 9.5 is very different from its predecessor. Beginning with Season Three: Genesis, a system involving schematics was developed. These schematics could be researched with basic data samples and were required ingredients for almost all items. Schematics came in 20 types (however, [Schematic: Bat'leth] was exclusive to KDF and [Schematic: Lirpa] was exclusive to Federation), for various personal equipment, starship weapons, or starship components. In addition to the common data samples, there were ten rare anomalies called particle traces. These particle traces were used to craft very rare items.

External link[]

• Official STO forum - Everything you need to know about R&D Crafting and Upgrading