Weapons Research

All weapons and defenses technologies were given a (roughly) 50% increase to cost modifier in TA 2.0 or TA 2.01 (perhaps it was 2.02).  I haven't researched it thoroughly but there may also be a change in how they impact tech inflation.

For what it's worth, if you're focusing your planets on research than your research centers are almost useless.  Focus takes 25% of the other two productions and gives 80% of that value, or 20% (the full value or 25% in DL/DA) to the focused production-for instance, focusing research removes 25% of the base funded military and social values and transfers 20% of the base funded military and social values to research.

You might try running at a higher research funding rate.

Devote more of your budget to research, or (re)start your game with research on "very fast". I always set my game for "very fast", and it takes long enough for me to get weapons techs.

Don't forget to research and build the higher level research buildings. If you are only using labs it will take forever to research anything.

Ah yes, thank you. Setting the tech rate to very fast made the game so much more enjoyable for me! Now it's time to up the difficulty... muahahaha...

And setting my economy to focus on research made things MUCH easier. I don't know why I hadn't messed with it already.

I've never had any problem with weapons research. In my last game as the Terrans, with Normal Research it was taking me 10 weeks per, and diplomacy upgrades 8 weeks. A little longer but not significantly. 

Yeah... But I'm too impatient for that. I need 3-5 week techs or else I feel like I'm falling behind. :/

I'm confused.  What is the point of a research center if they do not contribute to research when you focus on research?  What do you mean by "base funded"? I have 2 factories generating, whatever, 6 mp a piece for 12 total, and two basic labs at 4 tp a piece, for 8 total.  Sliders are set to 33/33/34.  Now I know from reading threads here that setting your sliders this way makes your labs operate at 1/3 capacity.  So rounding I get 3 tp from the labs total.  I focus on research, so I get, by your values, 25% of 12 from the factories, or 3, 80% of that or, rounding, 2, and stick that on research, for a total of 5 tp total on research. In this case the basic labs contribute 60% of total output.

I also chronically fall behind in weapons research.  I don't like researching weapons early for two reasons: 1) by committing, the AI can develop the right defenses immediately, and 2) the weapons are not good for anything but attacking.  A research lab, for example, can be used to research anything, and if I develop those early, the reasoning is that it will be that much easier to research weapons later. 

Here is the problem:  I get swarmed by opponents who not only have researched harpoon when they haven't developed research academies, they have every other unrelated tech.  And what is weird is that every civ has harpoon.  I can understand if they trade, which is fine, but the problem is that the AI will never, under any circumstances, trade those weapons to me.  It will not trade harpoon for 8000 bc.  It will not trade it for ALL of my other techs, or even a planet.  But it will trade it to all the other civs, unless the game randomly has all civs research missiles.  So I think, fine, the AI is paying for the non-weapons techs.  But the problem is, if that were the case, the other civs would be nearly broke.  However, they are flush with a healthy 3000 bc.  This is after I have designated my race as creative and set my sliders on high research.  On painful.  What is weird is that I've had the Thalens come to me begging for assistance (we were "close", but hadn't researched alliances).  I though, great, I have the production capacity to help, you sell me Stinger III and I'll be right there.  No dice.  His civ is about to cave, we are "close", but he will not, at any price, sell me a decent weapon.

Mumblefratz once made a good point that had me use "noral" as my reseach rate from then on. I used to use fast or very fast, but then he wrote about how the AI doesn't ever change after it picks a tech to research but a human player might. This means that on slower rates, the AI will not change their strategy and may be stuck researching a long tech while you can pick up others if the need arises. Although I don't too often change the techs I'm researching mid-way. I think that was the idea behind what he had said.

Also, on higher difficulties it is harder to keep up with the AI, especially early on. Haveing a very fast rate will just make you even further behind since the AI's bonus will be multiplied to a higher starting rate. At least thats the way I think of it.

However, if you see your games taking decades to play, want to try out a tech victory or play on normal difficulty levels or with huge research bonuses, then go for the fast rate. Its all whats most fun for you.

I always fall behind in weapons techs and I've now been twice saved but stealing a grteat tech from an invasion. The drengin were whipping me and i got their current best weapon, skipped a few levels of mass drivers; enough that I permanently abandoned the lasers I was working on. Your ability to NOT research weapons depends on your relations with other races and the difficulty you play on. If you feel you can stay out of wars longer go for planetary development. Thats what I do, only speeding up the weapons once i need to while only dabbling when i don't.

The AI is VERY stingy about trading weapons techs and a few others... like space mining. Jeez you'd think they were the game winning techs. You can sell them to the AI for A LOT even if they have no asteroid mines.

Yeah, I have also noticed the AI's obsession with Space Mining.  I'm not sure I understand about the tech rate, though.  The rate is the same for all civs, bonuses working on the same base value.  A normal rate allows me more time to build up my planet at every research stage, however, so e.g. I research research centers, I can get research centers built on all my planets before the next tech appears.  It means I get my research centers before he builds 7 levels of missiles, because production time is independent of research time.  This could be a solution for me as long as the the other civs obsess on weapons techs and neglect research infrastructure, which some seem to do, but if one other civ researches academies and trades it to the rest, there is no advantage.

I will try your suggestion, thanks.

Well, the numbers you've given me are actually too low to work with.

12 industry times 33% funding equals 4 industry for both social and military.  Taking 25% of this we get 1 from each of them, which is then multiplied by 80% for 0.8, which gets truncated (social and military values are fed to research separately, at last check, so they truncate before they add).  Additionally, 33% funding of 8 research gives you 2.67, which truncates to 2.  You're getting 2 research from your labs, and none from focusing.  In this scenario, if you simply had your military funded at 50% and your social funded at 50%, each would focus 1.2 over to research, which would give you the same 2 research output that you have now.

Granted, you will notice some difference, because you either have a 14 industry/14 research initial colony (TA version) or a 24 industry/24 research civilization capital.

The problem with focusing on research when you have labs is that, in general, you will have less social and military to focus from, both due to not having as many (if any) industry buildings, as well as generally having them funded less.  As you can see from the above numbers, running everything equally doesn't necessarily grant you any kind of advantage, either.

If we run the numbers with 100 industry and 100 research (to make things easy), at equal funding, we have the following:
33 research from labs
6 research from focused social
6 research from focused military
24 social
24 military

For a total of 42 research.  We can achieve this in our example by running research at 42%, and by splitting the remaining 58% evenly to military and social, we get 29 industry in each as opposed to 24 above.  We could even do 58% research, which is a 38% increase over our above numbers, if we were comfortable with having 24 social and 24 military.

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The bottom line is this, if you're going to focus:
-If you have primarily labs, focus on military or social (whichever one you need).
-If you have primarily factories, focus on research.
-If you have anything approximating equality, fund intelligently and only focus on planets that need it.

I tend to focus my planets on research when I have an overabundance of military built and few or no social buildings to build on my planets.

Thank you Sole.  Good post and very helpful.

Nice pointers for Mr.Noob here.

Nice name though.

I learned something new as well.

I think its better to focus on general techs that help combat, such as medium scale building, miniaturization, logistics, engine techs. 

You need to have enough of a military to impress the minors and to hold off the more powerful civs.  Making cheap ships (tech wise) with low offense and high defense might be an alternative here.   I don't like to commit early to high tech weapons, because the AI (at high levels) will counter them.

You can sometimes trade for weapon techs to get you a jump start.  The deal may be lopsided, but its ok as long as you are trading with a weak civ or a minor.  (and tech brokering is off)  Try to avoid any trades with the more powerful civs.  You won't get a good deal, and you will be even further behind technologically.  You almost always have to research Planetary invasion for yourself.  (as mentioned in another thread, temporarily switch to invasion just before you search a civilization graveyard)

If you are evil, researching lasers and then psyonic beams will help for a long time.  (although they are expensive)

Overall, the nerf to weapons research improves the game, by making it necessary to use low tech weapons.  This encourages fleet tactics (like modules), military starbases, and those precious miliatary resource bases.

In the end, nightmare torpedoes still rule of course.