[Krakenup]

Originally posted by Suicide Junkie:
It is a different ability in the game, but has the same icon.

The planets are predestined to give you one or the other type of technology when the map is created.

If you get the message "We have detected advanced technology present on this planet." then you will get one of the unique unresearchable technologies or nothing if you already have the one assigned to that planet. Originally, there was a "nothing" technology as one of the uniques so you could get nothing even as your first unique tech, but I don't know if this is still the case.

Any other message ("ruins", "devices", "cities", etc.) indicates that you will get one level in up to three researchable techs. These are not fixed ahead of time so you can "save file scum" if you don't get anything useful. The techs that you get are not totally random. There is some logic in picking what you get, but I have no idea what it is.