Taera, it sounds like basically what Narf is suggesting is you condense the tech tree into a small number of general areas - so instead of researching "Missile Weapons", "Point Defense Weapons", "Torpedo Weapons", "High Energy Discharge Weapons", etc., you just research "Weapons". Why you'd want to do that, I don't know, it just seems like it cuts down on the strategic possibilities for empires with different strategies coming in contact - remember SE2, where there was only one "tech area" - and it was insanely cheap to research?
