Merging techs Category?

Generally you want to focus your research on one weapons type at a time. However, when you get your research up to the point were you can blast through multiple techs in one turn it might be useful to be able to split the research. Also, for some branches it is useful to research older techs (i.e., moral techs for the bonuses) but then any excess research won't care over to later techs. For example, if I have Level 2 Morale, don't have Level 1 and 3, research Level 1 Morale, the excess won't carry over to Level 3 Morale.

tech trading isnt very useful unless you get the later tech and the ones before it.... that helps a lot... but researching several techs at once could be helpful, but only if you have A LOT of research dedicated worlds...

I think he means that if say, you research one technology of a certain branch, say
Weapons Level I

Then you would get Laser I, Miniballs *I think it is* I, and ...Missiles I, all in the same technology.

Problem with that as I see it, is that I don't know how you would work the balancing in that and whatnot, but, wouldn't it be possible by say, removing both the Missile and Mass Driver Branches, and requiring both missile and MD weapons to only have this special "Weapons I" tech instead of the normal ones to build on ships?

I think it would work, but, just theory.

You can branch as many techs as you want. Change the pre-requisites to this uber weapons tech and yeah, you can get all of them from it. Pretty simple XML coding, really (all covered in the Modding Guide).