Upgrades increase the production of colonies, provide various multipliers to BPS, BPC, and unlock new game features.

Other ways of unlocking new features and boosting production include:

equipping Evolved Bacteria
researching the Dark Matter Institute technologies
purchasing premium bonuses
collecting Gene Strands
completing certain achievements

Bacteria Upgrades

New Bacteria upgrades appear in the menu as you purchase more colonies (v. 1.1.2)

Bacteria upgrades give various multipliers to global BPS, BPC, as well as increase the production of different colonies.

The player unlocks new bacteria upgrades by purchasing more colonies. After purchase, Bacteria upgrades cannot be sold or disabled. An option to buy all Bacteria upgrades is unlocked after destroying Lableilara.

Most upgrades can only be bought once, but some are iterative. Iterative upgrades usually become available after the player has bought 200 of one colony type. Afterwards, they can be purchased once per 25 new colonies.

For BPS colonies, there is also a second tier of iterative upgrades, which becomes available per each 1000 colonies owned and provides a 500000% increase for the production of that colony.

Currently, there is only one iterative bpc upgrade and it is unlocked after obtaining 200 Bacteria guns and it can be purchased again after each 25 new Bacteria guns.

All bacteria upgrades are lost when attacking a planet or entering a Black Hole.

Gene Strand Upgrades

The purchased Gene Strand upgrades are displayed in red

Gene Strand upgrades enable and increase the idle BPS bonus, tapping combo bonus, as well as provide various multipliers to total BPC and increase the production of different colonies.

New Gene Strand upgrades are unlocked by destroying planets. Previously purchased upgrades can be sold for 2/3 of their original Price (Gene Strands), rounded down.

Gene Strand upgrades remain after planet attacks, but are lost upon entering a Black Hole.

Effect

Upgrades can have a variety of effects, the simplest of which increase the total BPS, while others may enable new game mechanics, such as BPS conversion or Tapping Combo.

Upgrades Increasing Colony BPS

Many of Bacteria upgrades and Gene Strand upgrades only increase the production of one colony by a certain percentage.

The effect of such upgrades is multiplicative. For example, if you have an upgrade that increases the BPS of Petri Dish by 200% and an upgrade that increases Petri Dish BPS by 300%, then the total production of Petri Dish is increased by 600%.

Upgrades Adding Bacteria from BPS to BPC

Some regular and Gene Strand upgrades increase BPC by a percentage of your total BPS. They do not decrease your total BPS.

The effectiveness of these upgrades is determined by:

their base effect; and
the number of destroyed planets.

The base effect is not displayed in the upgrade description. For regular upgrades, the base effect usually is 1%, but Toxic bullets, for example, has a base effect of 5%.

The final effect of the particular upgrade is calculated according to the formula:

effect = base effect / PlanetsDestroyed²

Main page: BPS conversion

Gene Strand Bonus vs. Gene Strand Upgrades

The increase to Bacteria production from Gene Strand upgrades isn't always as big as the bonus from unspent Gene Strands.

The usefulness of Gene Strand upgrades usually differs depending on your playstyle and current progress in the game. For example, most upgrades to colony production are worth the Gene Strand investment only if most of Bacteria production comes from these colonies. Similarly, BPC and tapping combo upgrades are worth it only for an active tapping playstyle.

One of the exceptions to this rule are the Gene Strand upgrades that increase idle BPS bonus. These upgrades almost always increase your total BPS significantly.

This is because idle BPS also provides bonus to production when the game is closed and it will be active most of the time. Furthermore, idle BPS multiplies the bonus from the unspent Gene Strands, which means that the upgrade can be worth the cost even if the price of the upgrade is very high.

Example: Gene Strand Bonus vs. A.I. controlled production

A.I controlled production is an upgrade that costs 2500 and increases the player's idle BPS bonus by 100%.

Let's say your BPS without any bonuses is 100.

If you have 100 (coefficient is 2.0), your total BPS without the upgrade would be 100 × 2 × 1 = 200.

If you purchased the upgrade it would be 100 × 1 × 1.75 = 175.

As you can see, the BPS is now smaller.

If instead, you have 1000 (coefficient is 11.0), your total BPS without the upgrade would be 100 × 11 × 1 = 1100.

If you purchased the upgrade it would be 100 × 10 × 1.75 = 1750.

In this case, the total BPS has increased.

List of Upgrades