I've been using spreadsheets to determine which weapon systems i should use for quite some time. Every new patch my script cracks open the xml and grabs me the numbers so that i can see if combat has been tweaked again. Prior to crusade if you asked me what weapon tree is best i would say it depends on your economy and the nature of the war. I bought crusades over the weekend (loving it), but now that i've updated my spreadsheets i noticed some dramatic changes. Mass drivers are great, and missiles are terrible! in addition to the math the numbers themselves have left me with several questions. but first I'll go over the results. as a caveat its worth mentioning that range of weapon is not factored into my analysis. in my experience missiles and beams get one shot off before mass drivers are in range so i do not believe range is a significant factor in battle outcome.
►mass drivers have great damage per construction point, while missile have terrible ratios (beam in the middle)
►the award for damage per mass point trades hands several times as technology advances
►when comparing the mass of the weapon to the mass of the appropriate defense system mass drivers excel compare to the other weapon types. same when comparing mass. this means that mass drivers will eat through defenses significantly faster than their counterparts
►the prototype antimatter missiles and durantium driver are actually worse than the weapons they are unlocked beside, both in terms of bang for buck and in terms of damage density
As for my questions, food for thought/conversation
1) Why does militarization unlock 3 weapons but weapon systems only unlock one?
2) why are the resource-less weapons not unlocked at the same time? (lasers is one tech before railgun or stinger)
3) why doesn't the elerium cost for lasers ever go up? (and for that matter why do missiles use so much antimatter)
The most important question though is why are the weapons even different? Its really a question of intention. When i choose what weapons and armor I'm putting on a ship part of what i do is i inspect several of my prospective enemy's ships and choose what best works against their current tech. i would propose that weapons of equivalent tech level should have identical damage, cost, mass, maintenance, accuracy, damage, and rate of fire, so that your choice is one of pure counter-strategy instead of all this economics. the other possibility is that the dev's assumed that everyone would try to put a bit of everything on each ship and so the differences are for flavor only. I would challange that idea however, galciv has always been a game where you can minmax super hard if you put in the time and pay attention, why muddle strategy with economics? thoughts?