Deconstruct & Analyze too powerful?

[Pax]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
If analyzing same or lower level technology components on ships contributed any research points to the tech area, what would be to stop me from analyzing my own ships? I could build a bunch of escorts with minimum components, an engine, and a weapon, and then analyze them and get a huge amount of free research points.

Obviously, you would have to limit this to only work on CAPTURED ships -- ships that are not from your own shipset.

As to the *why* of it -- picture: two alien races have the same general capability to build, oh, Phased Polaron Beam III's.

Race one managed to come up with a *very* nice waste-energy dissipation system, which itself helps focus the beam more efficiently (result: less wasted power involved in getting the same damage output).

Race two, OTOH, has higher-capacity output levels; they can pump more energy through to begin* with, it's just more wasteful and less-focussed ... resulting in the same effect on the receiving end.

In SE4 terms, both are using PPB3's; the mechanics are the same regardless of which race builds them. But ... each alien race has arrived at that abstract capacity, by slightly different routes. This means each race could potentially benefit from examining what the OTHER race did, or more specifically, what the other race did differently. A fusion of the two, even though they are identical in game-mechanics terms, might just lead to something better than either one alone -- say, PPB4's.