At the moment, the weapon tech tree is slightly imbalanced in favor of beam tech, or so it seems.



Rationale

Beam weapon techs come with kinetic defenses.

Kinetic weapon techs come with missile defenses.



Missile weapon techs come with... armor?

Beam defenses come with... power?



In order to defend against beam weapons, you need to delve into a line of techs that contains no weapons.

I usually pursue missiles, because I want the armor techs. Flying bricks do fairly well. Armor defends equally well against all types of attack.

Ya, I would be in favor of making it so that armor, power, invasion, and structures come from different techs than weapons/defenses and for the latter to be set in the rock paper scissors system.