Give me a little primer, a short nickel version, of what research is.

So items have different tiers. The default blueprint you get is tier one, and then you could research it to tier two. And tier two will require different materials. It'll have access to a different banding of stats, which are higher than tier one. And in order to get to that tier two, you have to complete the research task, which we kind of just alluded to — do X, Y, Z, initiate your research. Once it's done, you've got access to tier two. And then you can go to tier three for most items, and then ships go up to tier five.