Sleek Research Tab

Sleek Research Tab

Sleek Research Tab is a clean, lightweight overhaul of RimWorld's research screen, made for heavily modded games where the vanilla tab turns into a huge wall of nodes and endless sub-tabs.

It is part of my Sleek design family. Same idea as the other Sleek mods: make the UI cleaner, easier to read, and less annoying to use, while keeping the game's systems intact.

The All View

• Everything on one screen - see every mod's research at once, laid out as a clean left-to-right tech tree: early tech on the left, later tech on the right, with connection lines drawn between linked projects.

• Tech-era bands - the tree is split into labelled era zones, from Neolithic through to Archotech, so you always know which age you are looking at.

• Tidy sorting - research is sorted by tech era and prerequisite depth, so the tree reads more naturally instead of becoming a tangle.

• Per-mod sections - prefer research grouped into tidy per-mod blocks like Core, Vanilla Expanded, Progression, and so on? That is a single toggle.

Navigation & Search

• Smooth zoom and pan - scroll to zoom, drag to pan, and use the Fit button to frame the whole tree instantly.

• Readable at any zoom - node names stay legible even when zoomed right out.

• Minimap - the All view has a small corner overview of the whole tree. Click or drag it to move around quickly, and search hits light up on it so you can see where results are.

• Search and filters - find projects by name, source mod, or tech level, then jump between matches.

• Jump tools - jump straight to your current project, follow prerequisite chains, and use the back button to return to where you were.

Reading the Tree

• Prerequisite highlighting - select a project to light up everything it needs.

• Hover highlight - hover a project to preview its direct prerequisites and everything it unlocks before you even click.

• Focus mode - fade everything outside the selected project's chain so the path stands out. This is optional.

• Available-now glow - see at a glance what your colony can start researching right now.

• Cleaner visuals - calmer colours, clearer nodes, and optional per-tech-level tinting.

• Completed research options - dim, hide, or show finished projects.

Built for Big Modlists

Performance was one of the main goals, because big research trees get heavy fast.

At overview zoom, Sleek batches the tree draw for better performance, and heavier checks are cached instead of being recalculated every frame.

On very large modlists, the layout is built in the background the first time you open the tab. You may see a brief pause as the tree is loading in. opening the tab after that should be instant.

In short: it is built to stay smooth with large modlists and hundreds of research projects.

Research Path Planner

With Research Queue installed, selecting a locked project shows every step needed to reach it in research order, with a one-click button to queue the whole chain.

Recommended Pairing

• Research Icons - Sleek already draws its own icons out of the box, pulled from what each project unlocks, so this is not required. Research Icons swaps those for nicer, hand-curated icons, including research that does not unlock a visible item. Sleek detects it automatically and uses its art on the nodes and detail panel.

• Research Tab Colors - tints research nodes by tech level, from Neolithic through to Archotech, turning the zoomed-out overview into a quick tech map.

Compatibility

Sleek augments the vanilla research tree and tries not to fight other research mods. Compatibility is split into two tiers.

Works with Sleek

These are detected automatically and shown inside the Sleek tab where relevant:

• Research Queue

• Research Tab Colors

• Research Icons

• Alternate Research Projects

• Discoveries

• Clean Research Sort - prefer its layout? When Clean Research Sort is installed, a "Use Clean Research Sort's sorting" option appears in Sleek's settings. Turn it on and every tab, plus the All view, uses Clean Research Sort's layout instead of Sleek's own.

• Semi Random Research - coexists with its selection system.

• Node Research - fully compatible. Sleek enables when you switch to the normal research tree, while Node Research keeps handling its own selection system.

• Progression modpack

• Combat Extended

Not Compatible

These mods take over the research window completely, so they cannot be combined with Sleek. Only one mod can own the research tab.

If one of them is active, Sleek detects it and disables itself so nothing breaks, but you will see that mod's interface instead of Sleek's.

• Research Tree

• ResearchPal

• ResearchPal Forked

• ResearchPowl

• Organized Research Tab

• Better Research Tabs

Safe to Add or Remove Anytime

This is a UI-only mod. It does not add research projects, change costs, alter prerequisites, or touch research progression. You can add it or remove it from an existing save without breaking your research tree.

• UI-only

• Harmony-based

• No new research projects

• No research cost changes

• Designed for heavily modded saves

Requires Harmony.

No bloat. Just a cleaner, smoother, more readable research tab.

Disclaimer

I will not hide the fact that AI helped during development. The mod has still been worked on, tested, edited, and checked by me, and I do not release something unless I have actually put time into making sure it works as intended.

I also intend to actively support all mods I publish. If bugs are reported, I will try to fix them as soon as I can and keep the mod maintained properly.

Made with the help of AI and Modmixer.

Mod - v2.3.3