So I had the heavy Quasi-Chaotic Blasters installed
Attack +430
Size +55
Cost about 28 BILLION in credits and minerals

I sold those and installed
Heavy Thetacron Cannons
Attack +358
Size +55
Cost about 7 Billion in credits in minerals

The cost difference alone is about 160,000,000,000 credits for the better weapon tech just to gain 576 attack points!!!!

So I lost about 8% of my total attack. But I am saving about 32 deck spaces and 4 BILLION a day in upkeep plus the money I made on selling them. I can make up that difference in attack points in about a month with tactical officers and still be ahead.

I figure the next weapon would need to have a HUGE jump in power to even consider it worthwhile. Make it look something like this to even be reasonable...
BFG
Attack +600
Size +59
Cost about 30 billion in credits and minerals

BFG... that should be the official name. Wait, what would we call the next tier then?

RBFG

If we follow the rest, it would be:
Light BFG
BFG
Heavy BFG

I think he meant, "what would be after the BFG tier?" as in, after the heavy bfg.

Follow planets:
Very BFG
Extremely BFG
Ultra BFG
Mega BFG
...
15x Mega BFG

BFG, RBFG luulz.

Anyways, yeah the expense is justified since it's supposed to be the final teir of weapon, it's meant for only the realy high end players. Extra attack is extra attack no matter how you get it. As for the creds, by the time you get to where you can afford those guns, what else are you gonna spend them on? Once I get to where I can start spending most of my points into crew they're going into energy and most into defense, but that's a matter of preference.

Also, as far as crew is concerned, it's more efficient in terms of attack/energy wise to spend your crew into energy than it is attack. Konquul and Inergon racial bonuses my adjust this.

You forget to factor in the size and daily upkeep. By not having those guns you are saving yourself BILLIONS every day. What else would you spend that one? Other, more beneficial tech that also costs BILLIONS a day in upkeep.

And the size factor? Saving 32 deck spaces is a fair amount for such a small loss in performance. Thats 32 rank points you can put towards something else.

Not having to worry about that huge daily upkeep or loss of space can make a big difference.

no, i prefear biggest guns no matter what, by the time you get that sort of gun, you would get more than enough credit to support the upkeep, i don't understand what your fussing about.

The problem isn't having enough credits to support one thing. Its that when you get to my level (as you keep pointing out) EVERYTHING is expensive. It costs 800,000,000 credits to build one planetary structure (plus minerals). 4,000,000,000 credits to colonize a planet. That means to colonize and develop one planet costs about 10 billion credits.

All the other modules costs BILLIONs in daily upkeep.

If guns were the only thing I had to pay for, that would be fine. But I have to pay for dozens of other things too. When I can cut my daily costs by 1/3rd for such a small loss in performance, how are guns that cost me more than a hundred billion dollars every month worth it?

HOLY F**K /feints

But anyways, yeah I know things get that expensive at those tech levels, but the way I see it panning out, by the time your that far down the research tree, you'll be a lot less likely to be increasing research production, and in the end, dropping some of it since it becomes dead weight after you've researched everything, which leaves you a lot more planet slots open to colonize mineral planets, thus generating more income. Of course I could be wrong, but it looks like your in a crunch zone where your still in need of the research, but also in need of the increased funding.

I don't know how much more research you've got to go in your other trees, but you might be interested in going back and swapping some of those terras and icies that have good stats in both research and mining over to mining output instead of research output. Likewise I wouldn't bother colonizing any more research planets either and focus more on mineral heavy ones. Of course this all hinges on the whether or not you're actually finding those planets. If you have any luck like mine, you'll start discovering research heavy exotics and dysons right about the time you least interested in colonizing any
Either way you look at it though, if you don't have that kind of cred to throw at an extra 500 attack power, then your right, you probably don't realy need it. As one of the highest ranked players and one of the top 2 players with the most research done, you get the joy of figuring out how it all works out so you can enlighten the rest of us

Now if you'll excuse me I think i'm gonna colonize another mineral planet

Heh. I knew that weapon tier is the most expensive route for ship upkeep long time ago so I planned my ship for cheap upkeep while making a big nice punch..

I have almost 10k attack as konqul (I just switched to lazuli temporary for tanking and will switch back to Konqul cuz it's who I am) with almost 2,500 tactical officers.. I STOPPED at null ray technology and won't go higher.. My ship daily upkeep right now is only $2.5B that really frees up lot of resources into AP and RP.. My ship is already impressive and even superior than ships with $5B+ upkeeps and even $10B..

Yes, you are totally correct.. Researching higher weapon tier technology is not worth it..