FTL Tech

FTL Tech is the science of moving faster than light. In SFC2 it does nothing on its own. It is a gate: six other things in the tech tree stay locked until your FTL Tech is high enough, including Warp Drive, the Zeus Class and the Warp Gate.

You research it from the Research page like any other tech, and the level is account wide. Research it once and every planet you own has it, including colonies you found later.

What it does

Nothing directly. FTL Tech has no combat bonus, it does not make ships faster, it does not change cargo or fuel, and it does not touch resource production. Every level you buy is paying for the unlocks below and nothing else.

The speed part comes one step later. FTL Tech 3 lets you research Warp Drive, and Warp Drive is the tech that actually adds 30% speed per level to ships running warp engines.

Requirements

Three of them, and they do not change as the level climbs:

Research Lab level 7
Shield Tech level 5
Energy Tech level 5

Until all three are done, FTL Tech does not appear on the Research page at all. After that the lab still matters: you have to press Upgrade from a planet whose own Research Lab is at 7 or better. A level 7 lab sitting on some other planet does not count until you own the Advanced Research Communication Network.

The lab is the expensive part of that list. Shield Tech 5 and Energy Tech 5 are small change next to a level 7 Research Lab, and Energy Tech starts at 3 for free.

What it unlocks

FTL Tech	Unlocks
3	Warp Drive
5	Hades Class Battleship, Prometheus Class Destroyer
7	Advanced Research Communication Network, Warp Gate
9	Zeus Class

That list comes from the More Info button on the Research page, which shows the same thing for any tech. It leaves the Warp Gate out because the Warp Gate is a moon building and moon buildings are not in that list. It is real all the same: FTL Tech 7 plus a Lunar Base and you can build one.

Everything in the table has its own requirements on top of the FTL level. The Zeus is the worst of them: seven other techs and a level 12 Shipyard, so FTL 9 is only a small slice of that bill.

Cost

Level 1 costs 4,000 crystal and 2,000 hydrogen. Every level after that doubles both. FTL Tech never costs ore, and there is no level cap.

Level	Crystal	Hydrogen	Crystal spent so far	Hydrogen spent so far
1	4,000	2,000	4,000	2,000
2	8,000	4,000	12,000	6,000
3	16,000	8,000	28,000	14,000
4	32,000	16,000	60,000	30,000
5	64,000	32,000	124,000	62,000
6	128,000	64,000	252,000	126,000
7	256,000	128,000	508,000	254,000
8	512,000	256,000	1,020,000	510,000
9	1,024,000	512,000	2,044,000	1,022,000
10	2,048,000	1,024,000	4,092,000	2,046,000
11	4,096,000	2,048,000	8,188,000	4,094,000
12	8,192,000	4,096,000	16,380,000	8,190,000

Level 9 is as high as anything in the game asks for, and getting there costs 2,044,000 crystal and 1,022,000 hydrogen all in. Levels 8 and 9 on their own are three times what levels 1 through 7 cost put together, so the back half of the climb is the whole climb.

Research time

Research time is worked out from the ore and crystal in the bill only. FTL Tech costs no ore, so the clock runs entirely off the crystal half and the hydrogen is free time-wise.

Hours = Crystal ÷ (2000 × (Research Lab level + 1))

The lab can never be below 7 here, because a lab under 7 does not meet the requirement in the first place.

Level	Lab 7	Lab 8	Lab 10	Lab 12	Lab 15	Lab 20
1	15m	13m 20s	10m 55s	9m 14s	7m 30s	5m 43s
2	30m	26m 40s	21m 49s	18m 28s	15m	11m 26s
3	1h	53m 20s	43m 38s	36m 56s	30m	22m 52s
4	2h	1h 46m	1h 27m	1h 13m	1h	45m 43s
5	4h	3h 33m	2h 54m	2h 27m	2h	1h 31m
6	8h	7h 06m	5h 49m	4h 55m	4h	3h 02m
7	16h	14h 13m	11h 38m	9h 50m	8h	6h 05m
8	1d 8h	1d 4h	23h 16m	19h 41m	16h	12h 11m
9	2d 16h	2d 8h	1d 22h	1d 15h	1d 8h	1d
10	5d 8h	4d 17h	3d 21h	3d 6h	2d 16h	2d
11	10d 16h	9d 11h	7d 18h	6d 13h	5d 8h	4d 1h
12	21d 8h	18d 23h	15d 12h	13d 3h	10d 16h	8d 3h

Four things change that number:

The lab that counts is the one on the planet you start from. Once you have the Advanced Research Communication Network, your labs are added together instead, one to start with plus one more for every ARCNet level, and it stops mattering where you press the button. Only labs at level 7 or better get added to FTL Tech's total, because that is its requirement.
The Research Relay alliance perk divides the time, up to half at the top level.
Only one research runs at a time across your whole account, and you cannot start one while a Research Lab is upgrading on any of your planets.
Cancelling a research in progress refunds the full cost to the planet that paid. You can also finish it instantly with credits, which costs 1.12 credits per second remaining and is free once there are under five minutes left.

That is level 6 off a level 7 lab: eight hours, or 32,236 credits to skip what was left of it.

Quests

Three quests pay out along the way.

Quest	FTL Tech	Reward
Lightspeed I	3	15,200 ore, 3,800 crystal, 2,000 hydrogen
Lightspeed II	6	58,300 ore, 25,000 crystal, 1,700 hydrogen
Lightspeed III	9	9,400 ore, 75,300 crystal, 315,300 hydrogen

Worth knowing

Nothing in the game asks for FTL Tech above 9, so 9 is where it stops being worth anything. There is no cap if you want to keep buying levels, but you get nothing back for them.
Get to 3 early. It is 28,000 crystal and 14,000 hydrogen all in, and it opens Warp Drive, which is the tech that actually makes your ships faster.
Level 7 earns its keep even if the Zeus is a long way off, because it opens ARCNet. ARCNet adds your labs together, and after that every research in the game gets quicker.
Levels 8 and 9 exist for one reason, which is the Zeus. If you are not building a Zeus, stopping at 7 costs you nothing.
FTL Tech never asks for ore. That makes it a good thing to queue when crystal and hydrogen are piling up and your ore is not.
Like everything else you spend, the resources sunk into FTL Tech count toward your rank.