PLANETARY DATALINKS

• You automatically discover any technology discovered by any three other factions

    The ironic thing about this one is that the worse your faction is doing, the more good it does you. If there are several factions way ahead of you in the race up the tech tree, building this project will quickly restore you to parity (although it will never put you on top). On the other hand, if you're already way out in front of everybody else technologically, breakthroughs from the Planetary Datalinks will probably be far fewer.

    Even if you are the clear frontrunner in the tech race, you can expect a few extra goodies from the Planteary Datalinks. This is because the other factions don't share your same research priorities. If you're holding back and concentrating on building your technologies one level at a time, somebody else will be racing ahead after something specific (and sharing his finds with his alies, until eventually the magic number is reached). On the other hand, if you're going after some specific advanced tech, the Planetary Datalinks can help you keep up basic techs further down.

    And, finally, if you're already king of the tech tree, building this project makes it impossible for one of the other factions to build it and start siphoning away all of your hard-won advantage.