[Saben]

General Hawkwing,
I have to disagree. Some weapons can be shown to be clearly superior, and nothing will change those numbers. Meson bLasters cost more, even includeing the extra level of physics, than poleron beams. There is flat no reason to bother with them, period.

Wave Motion Guns are so costly, that unless you have a massive research advantage (ie you were gonna win anyway), sombody who selected a different weapon to go for and placed the left over points into various defensive or production techs would hand you your own head on a platter.

Anti-Proton beams offer the same range advantage the WMG has, for lesser cost and higher efficency. I would consider them a viable research path for sombody with superior engines. On the other hand, sombody with superior engines could go for ripper beams instead. Then, they would have spent far far less (the prerequisites were researched anyway) for a weapon with much higher efficency. The range disadvantage won't matter if you are closeing in on your enemy at a rate of two.

As to defensive measures, frankly boarding is the cheapest way to steal a ship. The defense is available early on in the propulsion tree, and takes only 10 kt. If the enemy is psycic, you will be forced to pay the costs for a master computer. But, even then, you are only looking at about 100k research points. I'm positive it costs alot more than that to get efficive allegince subverters, but I don't have the numbers in front of me.

Other tech takeing measures involve intel ops, which frankly I have never had used against me effectivly. Perhaps my strategies will need adjustment after I play a few games against other humans asside from my local friends.

Lastly, I agree that balance is important. But in my mind that balance is between missile, beam, boarding, AMS, repair, carriers, troop transports, and special case ships. The effectiveness gain for bothering to research down more than one beam weapon tree is not worth the research expenditure.