So,

Today I actually read the page while creating a medium-hull Quantum Torp-based design, and checked the graphs again. Iztok, you're right about the Psyonic Beam being an easy-win weapon.

It turns out that the only advantage that non-evil beam players get is that, while a missile player is using Quantum Torpedo 3, the beam player gets Doom Ray, and the missile player has to research Positronic Torp, Positronic Torp 2, and Black Hole Eruptor before regaining superiority.

Otherwise, it appears that missiles have a slightly unbalanced dominance. If the player either plays long enough to reach Black Hole Eruptor, or plays a game short enough to win before others start using Doom Rays, then missiles have no drawback.

What if, you avoid larger hulls and go down the miniaturization path instead?

If you've got Medium Hulls with Xinathium Hull Plating, you can spend another 5000 RP to get 80-space large hulls with 55 hp, or go down the miniaturization path and, for 5900 RP and a Hyperion Shrinker, get 105-space medium hulls with 23 hp.

It's very simple. All AIs are set to defend against whatever the #1 military civilization is using. If they have missles, go to beams because no one is going to research shields, they'll all be going with point defense. Comprende?
In this case, if you go with beams and point defense, your ships will cut through theirs like butter. The trick is to stay military #2 or #3. If you go to #1 the AIs will start defending against your primary weapon strength. If you drop to last or next to last you are the next one to be ganged up on, at least in tough or higher

You can't stay with medium hulls in tough or higher games, only on the lower settings. On the more difficult settings, all you ships will be large or huge by the end of the game. If you have some $2500 medium hulls out there, they are only to draw fire and let your big guns get a free shot. Your med hulls will get targeted first and usually blown away in 1 shot.

Er...recently won Obscene game with primary military ship being a super-evolved Defender, on a small hull. Had several archaeo-Rangers, but the main work was done by the Final Defenders. Never built a medium hull, much less a large or huge.

Depends on pacing, speed of research, rarity settings, etc. Lots of different options for strategy. But you have to make your strategic choices, then commit to doing the things that will make them work (and not waste time on side issues, distractors.)

drrider

Seeing the campaigns, I feel the developers purposely made Missiles so powerful. IN the early DL missions I've played, they aren't even an option, and in DA, you can only research up to Stinger before being forced to switch!

So far, in my 2nd and 3rd games(both Terran) on Rare Large Challenging, the Drengin went for Mass Drivers and Armor and the other AI all followed suit using Mass Drivers and Armor as well. Only the Yor were smart enough to use Missiles and Armor. Once I became the top in military and had conquered the Drengin, Yor, Thalan, and several Minor Races, the AI started fielding some basic Point Defenses as well, but nothing that could stop my Quantum(and later, Positronic) Torpedoes. In the two games, never once was a Beam or Shield used in ship battles, or for that matter, deployed on ships. Only starbases used beams, and that too, only because the Devastation Beam requires no research.

Okay, Iztok, there's a flaw in your enhanced analysis: it only considers Huge Hulls. Even when concerning first-second generation weapons that will probably never be used on Huge Hulls. Also, on the research graph, Psyonic Beam appears to be spiking off Plasma, and not Phasors, while Psyonic Shredder is spiking off Graviton Driver 3, not Graviton Driver 4.

Combining info from Iztok's research chart, the wiki, and the game, I've compiled these tables of weapon efficiencies, categorized by tech level in Research Points. The higher the efficiency number, the better the weapons. This contains all hull sizes. Second-gen weapons are grouped together since they all take about the same amount of research, at least on the chart.




Missiles appear to be superior until the Anti-Matter Torpedo, after which you get diminishing returns up until the Positronic Torpedo 2 arrives. Beams meanwhile, begin accelerated progress around high-end Phasor techs and come up with the Doom Ray amazingly early, trumping all contemporaries. Of course, when missile and gun users catch up several thousand TP later, beam users are stuck with an inferior, rather obsolescent weapon.

The absolute best weapon for tiny, small and medium hull sizes is the Black Hole Generator gun. The absolute best weapon for Large and Huge hulls is the Black Hole Eruptor missile.