Part of the Alliance Series:

Quick Answer

Alliance Tech is a shared research tree funded by member donations. You donate resources or biocaps, the alliance's tech level rises for everyone, and you personally receive Alliance Honor to spend in the Alliance Store.

Three branches:

Branch What it raises When it matters
Development Member capacity, construction and research speed, production First. It compounds for every member.
Territory Territory expansion, tower placement, alliance node access Second, once the alliance wants a real hive.
Battle Troop health, attack, defence, lethality, march speed, rally capacity Third, and permanently from then on.

Donate every day, to whatever your R4 or R5 has flagged as priority. A flagged task pays roughly +20% Honor on each donation, which is free currency for doing the thing you were doing anyway.

The part most players miss: the donation is not the point, the Honor is. Your donation is a rounding error against a whole alliance's contribution. Your Honor balance is entirely yours, and it buys things biocaps otherwise would.

Overview

Your personal Research Lab is one tree. Alliance Tech is a second, larger one that everybody funds together and everybody benefits from, and it is the single most under-used system available to a developing account.

Here's the thing that makes it strange to newcomers: you cannot meaningfully steer it. An R5 sets priorities, hundreds of donations land, and the tree moves at whatever pace the alliance's activity dictates. What you control is showing up daily and taking the Honor.

What you'll find is that Alliance Tech quietly separates alliances the way research separates accounts. Two alliances of identical member count, one with maxed Development and a deep Battle tree and one without, are not the same alliance to be in during SvS. Every member of the first is fighting with bonuses the second doesn't have.

The Three Branches

Development

The productivity branch, and the correct starting point for any alliance that isn't already established.

It carries Alliance Members tech, which raises the alliance's maximum member count by +5 per level from level 5 onward; an alliance that fully researches ten of these adds roughly 50 members to its cap. That one is close to a no-brainer: more members means more help taps on every timer, more donations, more rally joiners, and eligibility for events with member floors. Alliance Throwdown needs 15+ members before anyone can score at all.

Development also holds Timer Helps I to V, raising how many helps each member can receive on a timer, and the tech that raises help duration from the baseline toward roughly 150 seconds per tap. Those two lines are why an established alliance feels faster to play in than a new one of identical size.

The rest of the branch covers construction speed, research speed, and production rates. None of it is exciting. All of it applies to every member permanently.

[!IMPORTANT] Development first, and specifically Alliance Members. It is the only branch whose benefit compounds by making the alliance itself bigger, which then funds every other branch faster.

Territory

The branch that lets an alliance own map space rather than just occupy it.

Territory tech gates Alliance Tower placement and territory expansion. Towers extend your borders, unlock alliance resource nodes, and stop rival alliances teleporting into your area. The hive guide covers what that's worth in a warfare window, which is a great deal.

There is a real sequencing constraint here worth knowing before your alliance wastes a week on it: expanding into the Plains requires Plain March research, which itself requires clearing the fifth level of Alliance Members II. Territory ambitions run through the Development branch whether the R5 planned it that way or not.

Battle

Troop health, attack, defence, lethality, march speed and rally capacity, applied to every member's troops.

This is the branch that decides whether your alliance is dangerous. It is also the slowest and the least visible, because a few percent on troop lethality never announces itself the way a new tower does.

Standard ordering that most established alliances converge on: Infantry health and defence first, then attack and lethality across Riders and Hunters. Infantry take the hits, so survivability there returns more early than damage anywhere else. Use formation roles and reports to decide which troop attributes most need improvement.

Sustainability: The Tech That Never Finishes

At the end of the Battle tree sits Sustainability, which is deliberately impossible to complete.

It exists so that a mature alliance whose tree is otherwise maxed still has somewhere to donate. Members keep earning Alliance Honor indefinitely rather than hitting a wall where donations stop paying.

If your alliance is dumping into Sustainability, that is a signal you have joined a genuinely developed group. It also means your Honor income is now the entire reason you donate, since the tech itself does nothing further for you.

Donations and Alliance Honor

The mechanic in full:

  1. You donate resources or biocaps to an available tech.
  2. The tech progresses for the whole alliance.
  3. You receive Alliance Honor, which is personal and spendable.
  4. Flagged priority tasks pay roughly 20% more Honor per donation.

[!NOTE] Alliance Honor is personal store currency. Alliance Gold and alliance warehouse resources belong to the alliance's building and research economy. Community shorthand such as “alliance coins” can mean different balances; read the currency icon and destination before spending.

Three habits that cost nothing:

  • Donate every single day. The daily donation allowance refreshes, and unspent allowance does not bank.
  • Donate to the flagged task, not whatever you find first. The bonus is free.
  • Donate resources rather than biocaps as a free account. The biocap route exists for people converting money into progress, and it is a poor rate for anyone else.

[!TIP] Donating is one of the four things that belong in every session, alongside collecting, helping, and restarting queues. The daily routine covers the rest of the loop.

The Alliance Store

Where Honor goes. Contents vary by alliance tech level and by what the game is currently rotating, so treat this as priority order rather than a fixed catalogue.

Worth buying, roughly in order:

Speed-ups. The steadiest use of Honor for a developing account. They convert directly into builder and lab uptime, which is where account growth actually comes from.

Hero fragments, when your core heroes appear. Fragments are the real bottleneck on hero progress, and store fragments cost no biocaps.

Resource crates, early only. Genuinely useful before gathering scales, close to worthless after.

Teleports and relocation items. The cheapest way to move into your alliance's hive, and moving into the hive is worth more than most players expect.

Worth skipping:

Anything you can farm. Basic resources past the early game, and consumables events hand out freely.

Cosmetics, unless you want them. Same rule as biocaps: buy them because you like them, not as progress.

[!WARNING] Honor accumulates faster than most players spend it, and then sits unused for months. Check the store weekly. A pile of unspent Honor is the same waste as an idle builder, just less visible.

F2P vs Spender

F2P accounts should treat Alliance Tech as one of the best deals in the game. Donating resources you gathered for free returns Honor that buys speed-ups and fragments you would otherwise pay biocaps for. Over months this is a meaningful fraction of a free account's total progress, and it requires nothing but turning up.

Spending accounts can donate biocaps to push priority tech quickly, which is genuinely useful to an alliance racing a territory deadline or preparing for SvS. Understand that you are buying the alliance's progress more than your own. The personal return is the Honor, and it is the same Honor a free member earns by donating resources.

Common Mistakes

Not donating at all. The single most common one, and it costs the reader nothing but attention. Fix: add it to your daily loop.

Donating to whatever is on screen. Skips the priority bonus. Fix: donate to the flagged task.

Hoarding Alliance Honor. It does nothing sitting there. Fix: check the store weekly and buy speed-ups if nothing better is stocked.

Judging an alliance by power ranking. Tech level tells you far more about what membership is worth. Fix: ask about Development and Battle progress before joining.

Expecting Battle tech to be visible. It never feels like anything. Fix: trust it, the same way you trust your own research.

Chasing Territory before Development. Plains expansion is gated behind Alliance Members II anyway. Fix: Development first.

Alliance HQ Blocked After a Transfer

Check the alliance's construction balance rather than the resources on your personal top bar. In interfaces that offer the conversion, officers can open Alliance → Territory → Warehouse and use the shopping-cart option to acquire needed alliance resources with Alliance Gold. Confirm the cost and permissions before purchasing.

This is separate from Alliance Honor used in the personal store and from Supply Convoy, which shares eligible personal resources and materials between members. If the warehouse conversion is absent, inspect your state's alliance-building requirements rather than assuming another state's menu must apply.

Before spending the reserve on expansion, compare the proposed Analysis Center with existing center types and levels. A same-level duplicate may not add another copy of its bonus.

FAQ

What is Alliance Tech in State of Survival? A shared research tree funded by member donations. It has three branches, Development, Territory and Battle, and its bonuses apply to every member of the alliance permanently.

What should my alliance research first? Development, and Alliance Members within it. Raising the member cap compounds, because more members means more donations, more help taps and event eligibility.

What do I get for donating? Alliance Honor, which is personal currency for the Alliance Store. The tech progress goes to the alliance, the Honor is yours.

What is the donation priority bonus? R4s and R5s can flag specific research as priority, and donating to a flagged task pays roughly 20% more Honor. It is free currency for donating to the right thing.

Should I donate biocaps? Not as a free account. Donate resources instead. The biocap option is there for spenders pushing a deadline, and it is a poor conversion rate for anyone else.

What is Sustainability? The final Battle tech, which can never be completed. It exists so members of a fully researched alliance can still donate and still earn Alliance Honor.

What should I buy in the Alliance Store? Speed-ups first for most accounts, hero fragments when your core heroes are stocked, and teleports to move into the hive. Skip anything you can farm.

Does Alliance Tech affect my own research? No. Your Research Lab is a separate tree with separate costs. Alliance Tech bonuses stack on top of it.

Key Takeaways

  • Alliance Tech is a shared tree with three branches: Development, Territory, Battle.
  • Development first, especially Alliance Members. It makes every other branch fund faster.
  • Territory expansion into the Plains is gated behind Alliance Members II. Plan the order.
  • Battle tech is invisible and decisive. Infantry health and defence first.
  • Sustainability never completes, by design, so Honor income never stops.
  • Donate daily, to the flagged task, for roughly 20% more Alliance Honor.
  • The Honor is the personal payoff, not the tech. Spend it; don't hoard it.
  • Alliance tech level is a better measure of an alliance than its power ranking.