I'm curious about how people do their research in Aurora. All weapons and defense systems have multiple systems, most of which require seperate research. For instance, laser weapons have laser type, capacitor recharge rate, and focal size. I have noticed in my games that I tend to research each sub-system up to the same level, and then design a new weapon to use on my ships. For instance, I typically will have a 15 cm laser (3rd research level), with recharge rate also researched to 3rd level, with laser type also researched to level 3. It is pretty much the same with any other weapons systems I am using.
I noticed that I tend to do this because it is cheaper to research the third level in another subsystem than it is to go ahead and research the 4th level in one of them. For example, if I have previously researched all of the 2nd level laser subsystems, and I just finished research on 15 cm focal size, which is a 3rd level system, then it is cheaper to research 3rd level capacitor recharge rates than it is to research 20 cm focal size, which is a 4th level subsystem. Thus I tend to end up with lasers, or missiles, or whatever, that are composed of sub-systems that are researched to the same level across the board.
I'm curious about how many people do this as well, or if others have different research strategies. Has anyone tried pushing one sub-system to a high level before researching any other systems, and if so, how did that work out?
Kurt