Cpt. Kwok: If you mean giving each unique weapon
type a unique family, I can agree. We've got some weapon families identified by more than one family number -- Electric Discharge/Lightning Ray and Plasma Charge/Hyper Plasma Bolt in Organics, for example -- while we've got cases of several distinct and different weapons, like Ripper Beam/Incinerator Beam/Wave Motion under a single family in "High Energy Discharge" weapons. Completely illogical. I'm playing a game now where the Eee have begun researching HED weapons and they're throwing DREADNOUGHTS armed with Ripper beams at me! They already had a range problem, I'm defending with missiles.
Now it's a critical disadvantage. If the Ripper were a different family than the Incinerator beam and the Wave-motion Gun they just wouldn't build those dreadnoughts until they had a ranged weapon suitable. Now, if they had tractor beams in those dreadnoughts it might be a different matter.
On the other idea, though, I completely
disagree. Customizing weapon families in this way makes them only usable by the paticular race you've customized them for. I think all of the neutrals use the APB as their main weapon. You'd have to go back and alter the design files for them to include both families of the APB so their designs would not be affected. And that's just the neutrals. This could cause chaos with other race AIs. No, one family=one distinct weapon type. I do see that the APB has a very wide range of effectiveness. Maybe it needs to be reduced to 6 or 8 levels and made an 'early to mid-game' weapon, with something more powerful replacing it at the end. The tech field is "Energy Stream WeaponS" -- a plural, after all.
Hmm, then we need another "Energy Pulse Weapon" too.