Dan

Maybe for the next tier of items on the ships
rather than just research points -- missions have to be completed that unlock the tier.
This is the gist of it:
Mission unlocks rare artifact that is size 1 deck and is incredible in one tree of the research page. Then your scientist have to study it and unlock other items based upon it in your research page tree.
Weapons example a mission that gives a weapon as a reward which is size 1 and power 10. The energy vs. experience should be low maybe even 1:1. This is greater than the "Heavy Quasi-Chaotic Blaster 55 +430 7.364" from the wiki. It would unlock the next set of weapons research which is between 8-10 per size. What I mean is that first you research and create a weapon that is size 5 and hits 40 then second is size 25 and hits 225 and the last one (keeping with 3) is size 125 and hits 1250! Thus the penalty for massive worth but also massive deck space. Now the players have some hard choices and of course all these new weapons use new or very rare minerals to build not to mention the cost also possibly add a time frame to it. Say once you commit to build it you have to wait 8hr or a day for it to appear in your ship and you need to leave Deck/Cargo available or you get a message upon completion that their was no room and please try again (of course returning rare minerals and funds). Naturally Dan you'll have to play with the numbers but I hope the idea comes across well.
This method could be done for all the trees within the research page.

Also I do believe it would be very helpful if each player could designate one planet that could not be taken/stolen. This planet could change as time goes on. It would be a purely farmed planet except you might want to cloak it because ---- upon removing the designation every player that has the planet in their database of planets receives notice that it is available to be battled over (ie no longer designated.) I know that as I have played this game I would have switched planets many times and this method would have alerted other players to what are my better planets that they may want to battle me over. Protected planets should have one more negative and that is when one is shared by someone all players that receive that planet share now have the planet permanently in their database and it could not be planet fluxed for one week after you pull the designation off of it to give other players a chance to battle for it.

Forgive my lack of writing skills.

You know, perhaps instead of unlocking a tier for new high level stuff, why not have side branching tiers? These tiers could be small and unlock unusual, and useful, but not overpowered modules at certain levels. Whether you do the mission or not is your problem. That would add a new level unpredictability to the game. You don't know whether the enemy will have generic tech items, or stuff from alternate unlockable tech trees.

Fralo +1

Great Suggestion, +1 as well

do you eman like add a fighters branch to ship and/or research tree or something after comletion of a certain mission

Well perhaps fighters could be factored in. They could count as a device module, but add attack, and defense points. Maybe somebody should get Webguydan on this topic,

You can be pretty sure Dan or someone very close to him has already read this thread. I wish Dan would comment more in the forum but being unemployed I have plenty of time to read. I hope Dan is employed and working on GL.