I have noticed that in games where Tech Trade is allowed, all AI seem to get same weapons. Logically they trade around so thats how it starts.

But as the weapon animations on mass and missile techs are most annoyingly slow, I tend to go with beam weapons

I always use missiles because they have the best firepower/space for larger ships i believe.

Sounds just like coincidence with the AI using same weapons unless you have been trading weapon tech. I've had games were the AI used same weapons as me and others where they used different weapons. AI sometimes uses all offensive ships and other times will have heavily defensive ships.

I usually go for beam tech, although the AI often times goes for the shields (the ones that work against beam weapons) when they see me go for beams, but most of the time the AI does missile or mass driver tech and get bogged down by the high research cost of those branches while I forge on with the beam tech.

I always research beams first, just because I love the Doomray and the battles go faster.

My next branch depends on the AI's defenses.

Skyjack wrote:
"I also HAAAAATE the driver-weapons animations. A bullet is a mass driver...do they float over to their target, even SLOWING as they get closer?"

They only slow in an atmosphere. In the vacuum of space they would continue at the same velocity until they hit something or are acted upon by an outside influence, like gravity. Heading into a gravity well they would tend to accelerate.

That was that posters conclusion. Personally i disagree, i think missiles are the way to go-- the exception being an evil alignement which gives a real nasty beam weapon early in the game. Also cost/damage is not nearly as important as dam/space to me. But it does depend upon the size of ships that one uses. I use the largest hull that i have the tech for and don't think i've ever made a ship smaller than medium and usually making either large or huge hulled ships. I will say just looking at the raw data for weapons and their techs -- looks pretty well balanced to me. Check out the Galactopedia to get easy access to the raw data.

the huge hulls are useful against pirates though, I often create a ship class called pirate killers or pirate hunter/killers, something along that line which is a huge or large hull. Its actually just a very specialized type of ship that I use sometimes when I need to take out pirates that are harassing me or are just plain getting in the way. Even if the pirates are harrassing my enemies, they don't make any distinction between who is an ememy of who, so if they pose a problem to me, I just try to go around them until I get my pirate killers in gear. and I don't use those pirate killer ships for anything else, when the pirates are dead, I usually decommision them.

I usually use beam weapons, and I only use huge or large rarely, I usually use tiny or small ships in large numbers, no huge ship no matter how advanced can stand against over a dozen fighters because they have to kill each one one at a time.

I did a study of how many turns it will take to get each weapon (Research Cost), and how much damage they put out. Weapons Research Costs

Sometime I try to do a mix of 2 weapons, but usually focus more on one. I try to focus on different weapons each time I play a new game. As for the AI, I can also say that they tend to favor missiles and mass-drivers but in the game I'm playing the one of the civ's I'm friendly with seem to be using beam weapons as I do.

Problem is that when overresearching space weapons you most definately will get extra research into beam weapons theory, this usually makes me keep going into beams :/ I wish they changed that!

i mostly use missiles and beam weapons. but is decided by the race i is playing during that game. if i play as the yor i use missiles, humans beam weapons, as iconians i use a litle of a mix whit missiles and beam weapons. but i like the missiles most i think. i maybe should use mass drivers if the were better, but the suck. and i dont like them, after all the dont look as cool as the beam weapons.

Missles are good for starters because they research fast. In the end I go for guns. The other races don't seem to defend themselves against them. Last game, I built my attack fleets using huge hulls each with 4 black hole guns. Those fleets really kicked some alien butt. I also defend strongest against missles because that's what the aliens seem to go for mostly. As far as the weapons being visually slow, I just disabled the combat viewer, problem solved.

Often I disable tech trading, but still end up with everyone emulating each other. This is not only natural, but it is good military practice to at least be on relatively equal footing as those who might wage war against you. Occasionally in war, someone thinks outside the box and it actually works. Then you have a breakthrough until someone comes up with an effective counter. Example:

American Civil war firing lines broken by powerful artillery and better rifles,

Advances in weaponry largely nullified by trench warfare

trench warfare broken by blitzkrieg

blitzkrieg broken by combined arms

Technology continues to enhance combined arms.

Someday it will also be trumped.



Getting back to ship armament, most of my ships use a combination of beams and missiles. I find guns to be too weak or too massive to be practical until near the endgame when neutrino bullets and the bhg come out. Missiles do better damage and work much better than comparative guns on larger hulls. Beams are generally smaller or equal sized and do better damage and are cheaper to research mid-game. By the endgame, all top tier weapons overpower the top tier defenses.

Often I see the AI emulating the most successful navy's practices once the game is well underway. On many occasions the Drengin and the Thalans have quickly emulated my style of weapons mix and defenses. It's nice to know you've made such an impression...hehe