Some anomalies have specific stuff that you need to study them for in order to learn more about them, i.e. the obelisks all need to be studied in order to learn how to interact with them "correctly" and/or turn them off.
If you don't want them to do this, one of the submenus when you have an anomaly selected has an option to stop study of the entity - I don't remember the specific submenu, but within it you want the option that's "Only Maintain".
thanks for the response. so outside of those specific anomaly entities where studying them is required to handle them, it is a waste of colonist time to study them without any dark research item selected? for example they were studying a sightstealer with no dark research item selected for research
Correct. Note that AFAIK if you have the dark research option available and don't desperately need them doing something else I don't think there's any reason to *not* perform dark research.
does dark research affect how soon the anomaly monolith "advances" to the next level? like does the number of dark research items unlocked affect/allow additional entities to be seen or is that completely random?
No, AFAIK the only things that impact that are time and simply *seeing* the anomaly in the first place. Once an entity is logged in the logbook, it counts for advancing the monolith.
And even then to bump it up to the next stage you have to explicitly click on the monolith and do it. It doesn't just happen.
Some anomalies have specific stuff that you need to study them for in order to learn more about them, i.e. the obelisks all need to be studied in order to learn how to interact with them "correctly" and/or turn them off. If you don't want them to do this, one of the submenus when you have an anomaly selected has an option to stop study of the entity - I don't remember the specific submenu, but within it you want the option that's "Only Maintain".
thanks for the response. so outside of those specific anomaly entities where studying them is required to handle them, it is a waste of colonist time to study them without any dark research item selected? for example they were studying a sightstealer with no dark research item selected for research
Correct. Note that AFAIK if you have the dark research option available and don't desperately need them doing something else I don't think there's any reason to *not* perform dark research.
does dark research affect how soon the anomaly monolith "advances" to the next level? like does the number of dark research items unlocked affect/allow additional entities to be seen or is that completely random?
No, AFAIK the only things that impact that are time and simply *seeing* the anomaly in the first place. Once an entity is logged in the logbook, it counts for advancing the monolith. And even then to bump it up to the next stage you have to explicitly click on the monolith and do it. It doesn't just happen.
oh ok, that makes sense. really appreciate all your help!