What are the weapon tradeoffs?

Putting aside for a moment specific weapons (ie, Nano Ripper), and ignoring defense for a moment, what are the pros and cons of choosing one line of weapon tech over another? Is one weapon set generally cheaper, or generally take less hull space, or take less damage? Does one line research faster then the other?

I have noticed that missiles tend to have higher damage (at least early on) and take more hull space. But other then the Nano Ripper, I have not noticed any particular obvious difference between going for beam weapons and going for mass weapons.

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My own research has essentially come to these conclusions: I'll put up the evidence somewhere some time.

There are 2 real questions about a weapons system:
- what's the damage to space ratio per unit of research spent?
- what's the damage to cost ratio per unit of research spent?

In short
- beam weapons have the best damage/space per unit of research, which is to say you get more bang for your
research buck. However, the have the worst damage to cost ratio. i.e. they are expensive to install.

- mass drivers have the worst damage/space per unit of research, but, they have the best damage to cost
ratio.

- missiles are in the middle in both respects.

Thus what you choose is up to you: do you want more powerful but more expensive, or less powerful but cheaper? Of course there are other important factors to consider, if everyone in the galaxy is researching shields then take mass drivers or missiles

Personally my own view is, all being equal, I'll take lasers. This is because the cost of the weaponry on a ship is usually a lot less than the cost of the hull. In my opinion the extra cost of the weaponry is almost always offset by the reduced damage you take to the hull

Also, and not to be neglected, lasers look cooler in battles

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Sounds straight forward enough. Beams have best damage to space, and Mass has best damage to cost. Misslies are middle of the road, which surprises me since missiles hit 2 dmg early, but also take up twice the space.

Now lets kick the defenses back into it. Which defence tech is most effective against its respective weapon tech? Does one defense tech have a better def to size or better def to cost? Is it more expensive to defend against missiles then it is to defend against mass drivers? Does one def tech research much faster then the others?

If you were going to pick a given defense tech blind, you would want to go with the one that has the best cost / size / def ratio, since even off type defense is still somewhat helpful (16 armor is as good as 4 shield or 4 point defense).

If your going to focus on a given weapon tech, you may as well take the weapon tech that has the most expensive defense tech so that when the opponents start to compensate, it will cost them more.

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I also focus solely on lasers. I don't research too much armor, as a single point is enough until late in the game.

Also, you can focus only on lasers, and then rely on tech-stealing to fill in the other branches.

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Totally agree on that laser looks cooler.. it's the only weapon effect that looks like a weapon effect

Singularity drivers are the worst in my opinion, once I saw what it looked like, I had it removed from all my ships hehe

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In my opinion (and I need more analysis to confirm it) defense doesn't seem worth it.

Why? Well because my simulations suggest that if you choose exactly the right defense to counter an opponents weapons, and you load it on in the correct ratio you do better than a weapons only design.

However, if you load on two defenses, where one of them is the correct type and one of them is the wrong type then you do worse than a weapons only design.

Moreover, if you consider all the research points you put into defense that you could have put into weapons then you do much better to take weapons only.

I've only tested it for a limited number of examples and I'll do a more thorough analysis soon

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