Really? The Version I downloaded has stuff like Antimatter Weapons. But you don't actually get the weapons when you research the field, even if you get to say level 3... no weapons!
But if you research Heavy Weapons (general or race specific) you start getting the weapons... but short of looking this up in the components.txt file, I'd have no way of knowing this.
And then to complicate things a little, Heavy Weapons requires Medium Weapons (Lvl 2). Note that when you right click for a description of Medium Weapons, it tells you that you can expect nothing for your efforts... so Mr. Newbie will simply not research it, and not knowing that you get results at level 2, he will have a pretty hard time getting the heavy-hitting weapons = dead meat.
The same can be said of many of the research fields. Now I'm not upset or anything (it does look like a bit of a rant doesn't it) 'cause I'm happy to dive into the txt files. But some poor suckers are gonna get fleeced in their first (and second and third) PBW game, s'all.
Yadda Yadda Yadda
