As i was mentioning in the description and in the comments already i am working on a major overhaul of the basic economics of combat to make them fun, playful yet balanced (to a degree) and hopefully without too many loopholes.

Basics: Each Weapon comes in S,M,L so much so well known...

- Situation as of now is: weapons increase in price and energy cost thus driving buy price even higher considering reactor prices also go up. Result: New Tech goes south, becomes bad, worse even then old tech.

- Idea: Make Weapons great again... okok i know ;-) so, the key to balancing the weapons towards high tech becoming awesome is the progression of prices that needs to turn around. High price in the beginning and lower price in the end.

However if i overdo this you can build endless ships since your income increases while your ship prices dont.

I am currently testing fixed Slot prices for S, M, L slots

For example:
A Small Laser comes in several Levels of Improvement. To install a Lasercannon a Shipyard needs a fixed price since its basically always the same thing to do. Take Weapon Lvl 1 out put Lvl 2 in or lvl3 or lvl5...whatever.

A Small Slot might cost a fixprice of lets say 10.00 Minerals to build and install a weapon for it
A Small Slot also costs a fixed sum of energy like -20 Energy from your reactor pool to run the weaponslot.

So, what you end up with is a fixed price to run a weaponslot and from there everything improves. Tech can only get better now.

Why? Well.. this same rule counts for every slot in the ship. So reactors, fixed, armor, shields all fixed price and energy need on Slot size. Always the same price to install it.

Now the neat thing about that is...you as a player research a new tech and its automatically better then the predecessor. Cause both cost the same to fill the slot however Laser LVL 2 has better stats. Voila, easy pick LVL 2 is your new weapon of choice.

It does not stop there.. Your reactors are♥♥♥♥♥♥in the beginning.(Come on you just entered space :) )
However, after a while you learn to build new reactors. Now both old and new cost the same to install into your ship, however Reactor LVL 2 is much better in terms of energy supply. Which means you can install more Stuff into your Slots.

Yes and this also means, if you dont have reactors your ships might fly half empty since you cannot afford basic♥♥♥♥♥♥ It also makes Weapon Research absolutely worth your while. I ran countless tests on this and damn are those new weapons and equipments neat to have now.

If you apply the same logic to shields and armor it also means you will have less stuff in the beginning, you might barely if at all be able to fit some on your ships. Your early ships will be barely getting by :) however if you get a new reactor, you can use your shields finally. And the more you progress the more badass your ships will feel.

I have seen some heavy shielded corvettes take out naked corvettes without even losing one. It becomes really decisive to have the right combo, a good technology and well still a good amount. But technology now will make up for numbers...but not infinitely.

I hope this brings a bit of light into my plans on how to deal with the current mess paradox created by not doing much math in terms of basic stuff...

There will be more but this is the main road i am currently going down.

However there might be a downside to ai being able to handle this kind of thing. I hope it does not only use "price" as a factor to install a weapon ;)