Upgrades are permanent, run-scoped improvements you buy with cash from the Upgrades tab. They come in two shapes: station upgrades that multiply one station's profit (typically ×2 to ×5), and global upgrades that multiply the whole floor. Everything resets when you go public — unlike golden parachutes, which never reset — so upgrades are about making this run as strong as possible before you trade it away.
The one rule that decides everything
Buy an upgrade when its cost is under about one minute of your current income. Cheaper than that, it pays for itself almost instantly and you were wrong to wait. Pricier than that, the same money almost always buys more progress as station units or a manager. This single heuristic outperforms any fixed shopping list, because upgrade costs and your income both move exponentially — the right answer changes every few minutes of play.
The early game, concretely
Your first upgrade usually appears while the receive dock is still your main earner. Station-targeted upgrades on your highest-earning automated station beat global upgrades early, because one strong station is what your income actually is. A ×3 on the station producing 80% of your cash is worth far more than the same price for ×1.25 on everything. As your run matures and income spreads across five or six automated stations, global upgrades catch up and eventually win.
Watch the unlock rows: many upgrades require a station to reach a unit count before they appear. That means buying units is sometimes the real upgrade — the visible ×5 in the shop was gated behind "own 50 stow units" because the game wants you to build the base first. When an upgrade is locked, the lock itself is guidance: it is telling you which station wants your attention next.
Upgrades versus milestones
A station milestone (25, 50, 100 units…) roughly doubles profit on a schedule; a station upgrade multiplies it on demand. When both are near, milestones are usually cheaper per multiplier — but milestones require the whole chunk of units at once, while upgrades can be bought incrementally as income allows. If you are $200 short of a milestone, do not sit on cash waiting; buy the affordable upgrade and let the milestone arrive naturally from your next few income minutes.
Upgrades versus managers
When a manager and an upgrade compete for the same money, ask one question: is the station automated yet? If not, the manager usually wins — doubling and automating a station you still tap by hand changes how the game plays, not just how fast it pays. If the station is already automated, the math is pure: compare multipliers per dollar, and remember upgrades stack with the manager's ×2 rather than replacing it.
Timing upgrades around boosts
Because everything multiplies, a well-timed purchase inside a timed doubler window is worth twice as much. Heavy upgrade shopping belongs inside those windows when you can manage it — buy the upgrade, then immediately let the doubled income fund the next unit batch. The compounding is visible in real time, which is half the fun.
The prestige shadow
Every upgrade you buy is a loan against your eventual reset. That sounds gloomy; it is actually liberating. It means the worst case for a "wrong" upgrade purchase is a slightly slower final hour before going public, while the best case is a run that reaches its goal twice as fast. Spend aggressively on upgrades that pass the one-minute rule, ignore everything that does not, and let the parachutes worry about forever.
Reading the shop like a pro
Three things to scan before every purchase. The target line: is this upgrade for one station or the whole floor? Global upgrades are rarely the best buy early, when one station dominates your income — but they become the best buy the moment three or four stations contribute meaningfully. The lock icon: a locked upgrade is the game telling you which station it wants you to build; treat locks as a quest marker, not a frustration. The price relative to the milestone bar: if the next milestone on the target station is one cheap batch away, buy the units first — the milestone's free doubling usually outprices the upgrade for the same dollars.
The prestige math of upgrades
Because everything except parachutes resets, an upgrade's real value is the time it saves this run. An upgrade that costs one minute of income and saves ten minutes of runway is a ten-to-one return; one that costs twenty minutes to save five is a mistake. You can not know the exact numbers, but you can feel the shape: upgrades bought while the run is accelerating pay off enormously, and upgrades bought while the run is crawling rarely catch up. Spend when the graph is going up.