Newbie Question on special tech (Organic, etc.)

[Dragonlord]

Hi all,

I just modified my race to give it access to a special tech tree (Organics in this case) and see what cool benefits that would give me. I Have not tried any of the others (Temporal etc.) yet.

I must say, after 30 turns or so, I am a bit disappointed. But, I may be missing something here.. Please comment on this analysis:

If you research Organic Weapons I, you basically get 5 advances all at once, for different types of weapons (direct fire, missiles, no PD). If you research the standard weapons equivalents in stead (one by one) it will take you longer, for example lets say Organic Weapons I costs 40K in research, and researching 5 areas separately (DUC II, CSM II, etc) would cost like 70 K.

The thing is, the specs of the standard weapons beat the Organics ! (range, damage etc). Sure, organic missiles I (parasites) beat the CSM I, but by the time I have researched it my opponent already had CSM III..

Then there is Organic tech like Gestation Vats and Medical Labs...hmm. Is 1% more pop growth worth a facility slot? against AI players? I think not. Bio warfare? Never seen the AI do it, so I wouldnt need hospitals. Make my citizens more happy? (granted, 1% /turn SYSTEM wide is nice) why bother when all my planets are already happy? (dont know why they are happy, but just checked and looked for an unhappy system to build this thing in, turned out it wasn't necessary).

The only truly unique thing the Organics have is Organics armor (regenerates). But is that enough to spend 1500 racial points on?

Let's open up the discussion...and maybe a thread comparing the 4 special tech trees? I searched the forum but couldn't find a specific thread about it, although I'm sure it has been discussed before somewhere...