When starting out in Planet Coaster 2, you might find that you’re lacking when it comes to your ride options. Before you’re able to start placing down any rollercoaster or ride you fancy, you’ll need to do some research first, just like unlocking new items in Planet Zoo 2.

Research is required to unlock new rides, attractions, and facilities in Career and Franchise modes. Your mechanics earn Research Points, which you can then spend to unlock new items for your park.

How to Earn Research Points

To start researching, all you need is a mechanic and a Mechanic Workshop. But before you can start generating research points in Planet Coaster 2, the workshop must be connected to a path, have power, and be open.

It’s also worth noting that, if you have automatic hiring enabled, a mechanic will be hired when you open the workshop, and they’ll get on with generating Research Points without you needing to assign them to a specific project.

Unlike games like Planet Zoo and Planet Zoo 2, you don’t choose what your staff research. Mechanics simply generate Research Points that you can spend on whichever unlocks you want, until you’ve used up all your research points and need to wait for your mechanics to generate some more.

How to Spend Research Points

Research Points work like currency and can be spent in the Research section of the Park Management menu. There are seven research categories:

• Coasters
• Tracked Rides
• Water
• Power
• Transport
• Flat Rides
• Flumes

Water, Power, and Flumes each have two levels to unlock, while Tracked Rides has three and Transport has five. Completing these levels unlocks the available blueprints and building parts within each category. For most categories, you can’t choose which level to unlock next. You must work through them in order, with the cost increasing slightly as you progress.

Flat Rides and Coasters work a little differently. Some chapters contain two separate unlocks, allowing you to choose which one to research first. However, you’ll need to unlock both before progressing to the next chapter.

Once you’ve accumulated enough Research Points, simply select the option to research the category and pay the displayed cost in Research Points. The new items become available immediately, so there’s no need to wait for your mechanics to complete another research task.

Speeding Up Research

If you’re looking to build as much as possible in your theme park, you might want to consider speeding up the generation of Research Points. Thankfully, this can be done.

While you can only have one mechanic working in a research building at a time, you can have more than one research building, each with its own mechanic making more Research Points for you, and speeding up how quickly you can unlock new rides and other buildings.