Roadside Research Upgrades: The Capitalist Alien Playbook
Spending your hard earned research points on the wrong alien tech is the fastest way to get assassinated by the Men in Black.
learned the hard way that running a gas station as a literal extraterrestrial requires a delicate balance of aggressive capitalism and extreme stealth. You have two completely different upgrade trees pulling at your attention. One is designed to maximize your cash flow by expanding your store and unlocking new products. The other is pure alien technology meant to harvest data from your miserable human customers. If you push too hard into store products without expanding your floor space, your customers get pissed. If you buy high tier alien surveillance gear too early, government agents will literally turn you into a puddle of goop on your own linoleum floor. I am going to show you exactly what to buy, what to avoid, and how to use the camera without blowing your cover.
The Essential Early Game Upgrades
You need to establish a rock solid foundation before you start acting like a mad scientist. Cash flow and low risk research are your only priorities for the first few days of the game.
Prioritize Store and Pump Expansions
Do not touch the fancy product lines until you actually have room to put them somewhere. Your absolute first major store purchases should be the Pump Expansion and the Shop Expansion. Adding more pumps brings in a constant stream of cars. More cars mean more humans, which translates to more money and more trash to recycle. Expanding your physical shop space prevents overcrowding and gives you the footprint you need to actually place double fridges and bakery shelves.
The Holy Trinity of Alien Tech
Your alien points are precious early on. Stop looking at the laser guns and focus on the holy trinity of early progression. You want the Trash Bag for 50 points, the Trashcan for 300 points, and the Camera for 450 points. The trash items automate your cleanup routine so you are not running around like a headless chicken picking up single soda cans. The Camera is your first real tool for active research and it pays for itself almost immediately.
Mastering the Extraterrestrial Camera
Once you drop 450 research points on the camera, a whole new daily objective system opens up on the big monitor in your secret back room. This is how you start printing alien points.
Fulfilling Daily Targets
Every single day, the game assigns you three random physical traits to hunt down. You might need a photo of someone with blue hair, a pink top, and black bottoms. You do not need to find one unicorn customer wearing all three. You can snap photos of three different people who meet the individual criteria. Hold down the right mouse button to aim the camera and a handy little interface will pop up showing you exactly what colors a customer is wearing. If they match a daily target, snap the shot with the left mouse button. Each successful trait gets you a solid chunk of points.
How to Be a Creep and Survive
Humans are stupid, but they do not like having a camera shoved directly into their faces. Taking a photo from the front is a guaranteed way to spike your suspicion meter. When you aim the camera, watch the little eye icon floating over the customers. If it is greyed out with a cross, you are completely safe. If it turns red, people are watching you and taking the picture will draw massive heat. My personal strategy is to target people who are standing frozen outside pumping gas. They are distracted, nobody is looking at them, and you can easily snap a photo of their back without raising any alarms.
Upgrades That Will Get You Killed
It is incredibly tempting to buy the coolest sounding alien gadgets on the tech tree. I am telling you to hold off. Some of these items come with massive hidden penalties that will ruin your run.
Managing Your Product Lines
When you finally have the floor space to sell more than just cheap soda, you need to manage your inventory smartly. Unlocking a product is a permanent commitment to stocking it.
Pacing Your Inventory
The moment you unlock an upgrade like Fresh Produce or the Drugstore rack, the game logic updates. Customers will walk in expecting to buy apples and pain pills. If you blew all your cash on the actual upgrade and have no money left to order the stock, they will leave angry. I always make sure I have at least double the upgrade cost sitting in the bank before I pull the trigger.
Quality of Life Purchases
Do not ignore the decoration tab. While the Dog is completely useless and just makes a loud annoying panting noise, the ATM is a godsend. Drop 50 bucks on an ATM and customers will start paying with cards instead of cash. This saves you from the fiddly bullshit of counting out exact change at the register. Also, if you ever mess up your store layout, just enter edit mode and delete the shelves. The game gives you a full 100% refund on deleted items, so you are never punished for rearranging your retail empire.
