NETWORK BACKBONE

• +1 research at this base for every point of commerce this base receives
• +1 research for every Network Node in existence on Alpha Centauri, regardless of the player owning the Network Node
• Eliminates the negative effects of Cybernetic society

    This project has more goodies than Christmas morning, and should probably be considered essential to any long-term development strategy (and especially in attempts to win by Transcendence). If you want to be the first to the top of the tech tree, this will put you there better than any other single factor.

    The extra Labs from Commerce is nice (try to build it at one of your larger and more established bases, to get the most from the Commerce bonus). The big kick, however, is the bonus from Network Nodes. If you have a reasonably strong faction, and you're building nodes at every new base (as you should) your own faction's nodes will pump your Labs score prodigiously, and if there are some other strong factions elsewhere, this project makes a bit of their strength into your strength. Combine the Network Backbone with the Supercollider and the Theory of Everything, and watch those advances start to roll!.

    On top of it all, you get the penalties removed from the Cybernetic social choice, which allows you to crank your Efficiency, Planet and Research (!!) without any downside whatsoever. If you're pursuing a development-based strategy, you do want to grab this as soon as possible, and you most definately do want to choose Cybernetic as soon as you do.