All items are developed through your Investments display. As you build new structures or upgrade structures, new items will become available and will be found under their appropriate structure tab in the Investments display.

In the Investments display, you'll see the following references before the name of the items:

Build -- This is a new structure. Creating a build item will launch a constructor that will then either attempt to build the structure on an available asteroid or wait for the commander to specify a building location.>

Upgrade -- This will upgrade a current structure and give access to additional tech tree items through that structure's tech tree.>

Ship -- This is a new ship class. Once it is researched, it will be available in the Loadout. Remember that capital ships can only be launched from Shipyards.>

Dev -- Dev means develop. Development items are usually newer versions of items you already have access to. Once a newer item is upgraded, the original version is no longer available.>

EW/PW -- EW stands for energy weapon and PW stands for particle weapon.>

SRM/MRM/LRM -- S stands for short, M stands for medium, and L stands for long. R stands for ranged and M stands for missile.>