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You could skip that part for the time being. I try to focus more on food production once I have the resource upgrades (reclaimable materials and trash evaluation) at this point having the option for a research outpost would be a good option to have additional research data coming in if you don't have a lot of research data available. Once you have metal scavenging unlocked you could then focus your research on other projects like education in the community tree(all colonists can get a 30% production buff if they attend a school long enough as a child) food production will eventually become necessary for sure so when you start that is up to you. Unlocking the options with it like reclaimable materials and trash evaluation would help your material production in the long run for plastic and metal. I would then swap over to the resource tree to unlock metal scavenging as a priority as a lot of buildings require metal. You could go ahead and unlock the frontier outpost option (specialist turn into outposts on world map) in that tree but I wouldn't do that straight away. I wouldn't go too far into that tree just yet. Some of the early options under that category can give you an additional slot on medical tents and even speed up the healing process so you can cure your survivors faster. My personal recommendation would be to start your first few research in the safety category as stuff like infections, injuries, and radiation sickness is very common.
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There is no specific order you need to do but doing it a certain way may help depending on what you're struggling with the most. Well firstly what you should consider is the ideology that you choose (survival, safety, and industry) as each has some unique research options for all 3.
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