I, for reasons I do not understand, have yet to build a ship but have already unlocked level 3 weapons, I had just only unlocked level 1 hyperium weapons. I cannot be more that 50 turns in at the moment. I am still at the basic colonization stage! These tier upgrades are rendering my researched upgrades moot before I even have a ship out the door. 

Is anybody else noticing this?

Well you are focusing your research on weapons and militarization instead of economic, scientific and habitat-building right? Isn't that the whole point of the circle, choosing which path to follow? 

Evil713 wrote:

I, for reasons I do not understand, have yet to build a ship but have already unlocked level 3 weapons, I had just only unlocked level 1 hyperium weapons. I cannot be more that 50 turns in at the moment. I am still at the basic colonization stage! These tier upgrades are rendering my researched upgrades moot before I even have a ship out the door. 

Is anybody else noticing this?

I noticed the same thing and I guess we got the upgrades because we were further in different parts of the tech tree than in the actual military part. It kinda makes those upgrades useless, at least the early versions of e.g. hyperium. It also makes the Sophon ships potentially incredibly strong in the beginning. My first ship was an upgraded small fighter and destroyed piratefleets consisting of one bigger and to small ships easilly. I bet they ll change the gain of new weapong tech to the military tree in time.

But with era's it took 10 researches to get to the next weapon techs, now it takes two or three or four and suddenly you got more tech than you can use very quickly. There's no point in the lockout choices because your beyond them as soon as you have them.

It's almost like there should be a dedicated research to unlock the next era's, an end cap research, to slow it down.

I find research is far too fast in this update preview, however i put that down to testing reasions. At turn 50 i am easily tier 5 in atleast two areas, where as before i would be around tier 3 ish. I suspect we will see a doubling of duration once the final tree is completed, remembering that we are missing tech currently. I am finding myself skipping hulls entirely and just going for a dread, getting dread, winning everything.

I would really like to see the durations simlar to that of ES1. Personally i would be very happy with it if it were to go that path.

Maybe researches need to take more RP to unlock? but you still have near the same runaway problem, especially with the locked choice techs giving the illusion of more researches. Its like discovering how to make charcoal and fusion power at the same time, why the hell did I work on charcoal?