If you need space for techs.
The vanilla rebellion "defense" tech window only allows one (1) window...but that window can have a maximum of 10 rows of researches in it!
Just an FYI
Only 1? Damn, I was hoping to have two... Well, it'll still work fine, as all the research there is somewhat related.
Heres a very vague description of what I'm working on here.... Well, kinda vague. There are many words in it, beware.
I was thinking that the research, unlike vanilla Sins, should be 80% credit based with cost, due to research grants and all that. I was considering having resource costs be based on the type of research, i.e. hull research costs a ton of metal, but there aren't a lot of things you could apply this to, and it may get somewhat unbalanced. Having ships and structures more resource based and research more credit based makes for a good economic system, I think.
Military has two windows, one dedicated to offense, one to defense. All the weapon upgrades go in the top window, and all the defensive upgrades like hull, shields, and armor will be at the bottom.
Each of the three main weapon types (Two, for Kusari) will have two damage upgrade paths each, one for fighters and one for capitals.
Below these are the non-damage upgrades for these weapons. There are three upgrades each for the two main weapons of a faction, and two upgrades for the weapon they have less experience with. The first two upgrades are fire rate and range, and the third upgrade is based on the weapon and faction as to it's function.
To provide an example, Liberty Lasers have three upgrades, one for fire rate, one for range, and the special one is also fire rate.
These non-damage upgrades, while listed horizontally, are all unlocked later ingame, probably tech 5, instead of their column-based tier. This difference can be shown by giving these upgrades the Rebellion Research Overlay.
After than are the missile researches, which I'm not sure on how to handle right now. I'll probably have a missile damage research with many levels, a torpedo damage research with many levels, and a few extra researches that improve the fire rate or range of individual missile types, like Seeker Missiles or EMP Missiles. Something like that.
The defensive trees will be interlinked, in that progressing down one tree reduces the effectiveness of the other. Researching both trees will result in an overall benefit over standard, but without the more extreme specialization that a single tech branch would provide.
To provide an example, one shield path increases shield regen and slightly decreases shield capacity, while the other increases shield capacity and slightly decreases shield regen. Both research trees also increase shield bypass blocking by a very small percentage, probably 1%. Researching a complete path will give you ships with incredible regen or capacity, and researching both will give you a moderate amount of both, and a decent amount of shield bypass blocking.
Hull paths have one that increases hull strength and armor, but slighty reduces repair rate, and another path that increases repair rate, but slightly decreases hull strength. Each research also increases mass very slightly. Researching both paths will give you moderately increased hull and regen, and a decent armor increase, but with a fair increase in mass.
The Defense window was originally going to be two windows, one for normal military R&D, and the other for top secret research, but it looks like it'll be one window, perhaps with a visible gap between them.
The main section will have all the research that unlocks ships, unlocks ship abilities and unlocks ship upgrades. This will also have the antimatter upgrade tree.
The secondary section will contain all the experimental research involving captured artifacts. Each artifact will have between one to three researches each, and those researches will act as prerequesites for further research that eventually leads to the Artifact Ship of your faction. The prerequisite researches will take a long time compared to most researches, and will also improve a related stat by a considerable amount.
Make sure to build your titan yard on an dead asteroid somewhere, surround it with mines and call it Zone 21. 
I haven't thought too much ahead about the Civilian tree, but it will likely be in two sections, Contracts and Government. I might split the contracts window up into individual company windows, but only if it doesn't waste too much space. The contracts section will have all the research and upgrade projects with the various companies Liberty does business with.
Ageira Technologies will improve cruise speeds, create Jump Hole Stabilizers, supercharge cruise drives for travel between stars, long range ship scanners, and provides cruise disruption and anti-cruise disruption techs.
Deep Space Engineering will provide designs for new orbital structures, and two paths for ship building, one that increases speed but slightly increases resource cost, and one that decreases resource cost and slightly decreases speed. Both researches also give a very tiny credit cost reduction. Researching both paths will allow you to build ships cheaper and faster than normal, but you won't be as fast or as cheap as a single path. Orbital structures will also have a tree exactly like the ship one, so you can specialise them or upgrade them as you wish. Instead of 8 different upgrades for each path like the ones in the Military window, each path only has 3, allowing all DSE technologies to fit on two lines, despite their complexity.
Independant Miners Guild will provide several upgrades for metal mining. DSE and IMG also collaborate with one another to provide upgrades to H-Fuel gas miners.
Universal Shipping provides upgrades for trade ships value increases, as well as an upgrade that increases the hull of trade ships.
Interspace Commerce provides an upgrade that causes bounties to be placed on those who attack Liberty shipping. They also give an upgrade that decreases the cost of black market transactions a bit better than any other faction.
Cryer Pharmaceuticals provides research that increases population count and regen on all worlds, as well as population bombing resistance.
Planetform Inc. provides the research to colonize and improve the various uninhabitable planet types of the game.
Synth Foods provides research to increase population on habitable planets.
Liberty has contracts with smaller businesses and groups for other tasks, such as exploring planets, or resisting culture. When the culture resistance tree is complete, you can call Order vessels with disabled cruise drives to aid you from a culture center, provided a Nomad ship is in your current gravity well, wrecking your shit.
The Diplomacy window would be fairly similar to the vanilla, just with some changes like Luxury Liners being hired from Orbital Space and Cruise to be used as Envoy ships, etc.
The pacts I won't elaborate on at this point, as I'm not sure what your plans for them might be.
The graphical representation of this that I've been working on has been going quite slowly, so I figured I'd write this up instead of having you wait for it to be finished to get an idea of where I'm going with this. Whatcha think of it? Hopefully I typed everything correctly...
