Weapons Tech

Weapons Tech makes everything you own hit harder. Every level adds 10% of a unit's base weapons rating, on ships and on defenses alike, and it lifts your missile damage as well. It is the cheapest way to make a fleet hit harder without building more ships.

Effect

Each level adds 10% of the base rating, and the levels do not compound. Level 1 gives you 110% of base, level 5 gives 150%, level 10 gives 200%. It is base plus 10% a level, not 10% on top of the last level. There is no cap.

Tech belongs to your account rather than to a planet, so you pay for it once and every planet you own gets it. It counts wherever your guns fire, on a raid or sitting at home behind your wall.

You can read the boost straight off the Shipyard and Defense pages. Base is the plain design number and the green Current column is what you actually field with the tech you have. A Prometheus Class Destroyer has 2,000 base Attack Strength. At Weapons Tech 10 it fires for 4,000.

Where to research it

Weapons Tech sits on the Research page. The only thing you need before you can start it is a Research Lab at level 4. It has no tech requirement at all, which is unusual, and it is why Weapons Tech is one of the first things you can put research into.

The row above comes from a planet with a level 8 Research Lab, but that player also has the Advanced Research Communication Network at level 2, which pools the three best labs in the empire. That is why level 11 reads 1d 4h 26m there instead of the 2d 8h 53m a lone level 8 lab would take.

Cost

Weapons Tech costs four parts ore to one part crystal and no hydrogen at all. Level 1 is 800 ore and 200 crystal, and every level after that doubles both.

Level	Ore	Crystal	Weapons boost	Time at Research Lab 8
1	800	200	10%	3m 20s
2	1,600	400	20%	6m 40s
3	3,200	800	30%	13m 20s
4	6,400	1,600	40%	26m 40s
5	12,800	3,200	50%	53m 20s
6	25,600	6,400	60%	1h 46m
7	51,200	12,800	70%	3h 33m
8	102,400	25,600	80%	7h 6m
9	204,800	51,200	90%	14h 13m
10	409,600	102,400	100%	1d 4h 26m
11	819,200	204,800	110%	2d 8h 53m
12	1,638,400	409,600	120%	4d 17h 46m
13	3,276,800	819,200	130%	9d 11h 33m
14	6,553,600	1,638,400	140%	18d 23h 6m
15	13,107,200	3,276,800	150%	37d 22h 13m
16	26,214,400	6,553,600	160%	75d 20h 26m

The table stops at 16 because the doubling gets silly after that, not because the tech does. Everything up to level 10 together costs 818,400 ore and 204,600 crystal, which is less than level 11 on its own.

Research time is the ore plus crystal cost times 1.8, in seconds, divided by one more than the Research Lab level on the planet you start it from. A better lab is the only thing that speeds research up, and ARCNet lets the labs on your other planets add their levels in as well. You can cancel a research in progress and get every resource back, and you can pay credits to finish one early.

What one more level is worth

More than 10%, and the reason is that a shot has to get through the target's shield before anything reaches the hull. The shield comes off the top, so the part of your rating that actually sticks grows faster than the rating does.

An Athena Class Battleship shoots for 1,000. Against a Gauss Cannon owned by a player with Shield Tech 10, that gun carries 400 shield. At Weapons Tech 0 the Athena puts 600 damage on the hull. At Weapons Tech 10 it fires for 2,000 and puts 1,600 on the hull. Twice the rating, nearly three times the damage that counts.

Here is the same idea run through the battle engine. Three hundred Athena hit a wall of 200 Gauss Cannons, both sides on Shield Tech 10 and Armor Tech 10, and the only thing that changes is the attacker's Weapons Tech. The attacker wins every single run, so all that moves is how many Athena come home.

Attacker's Weapons Tech	Athena lost, out of 300	Resources lost
0	123	7.4M
2	102	6.1M
4	76	4.6M
6	65	3.9M
8	60	3.6M
10	55	3.3M
12	53	3.2M

Going from nothing to Weapons Tech 10 saves about 68 Athena on that one raid, which is a little over 4 million resources. The whole ten levels cost 1,023,000. It pays for itself the first time you use it, and again every time after that. The early levels do the heavy lifting and the returns flatten out later, which is the usual shape for all three combat techs.

It only counts against their research

Attack, shield and hull all scale by the same 10% a level. If both sides sit on the same combat tech levels the fight comes out exactly as if neither side had researched anything at all. Your Weapons Tech is only worth something measured against the other player's Shield Tech and Armor Tech.

That is a good reason to spy before you commit a fleet. The same wall with Shield Tech 3 behind it and with Shield Tech 12 behind it are two completely different fights, and nothing on the galaxy screen tells you which one you are looking at.

Shots that bounce

A shot is absorbed for zero damage when it is worth 1% or less of the target's full shield rating, and a bounced shot also ends any rapid fire chain that unit had going. Weapons Tech is one of only two things that move that line. The other is the defender's Shield Tech.

Against a defender sitting on Shield Tech 10, this is the Weapons Tech you need before your shots land at all.

Attacker	Large Decoy	Zeus Class	Hephaestus
Artemis (50)	31	191	591
Apollo (150)	4	57	191
Athena or Ares (1,000)	0	1	21
Prometheus (2,000)	0	0	6

The line moves with the defender. That same Artemis only needs Weapons Tech 11 against a Large Decoy with no Shield Tech behind it, and 31 once the owner has Shield Tech 10. There is nothing partial about it either. One level below the number in the table, your entire fleet does literally nothing to that unit.

Missiles

An Interplanetary Ballistic Missile hits for 12,000, and Weapons Tech lifts it like everything else, so at level 10 every missile that gets through does 24,000. Missile damage is not absorbed by shields at all. It goes straight onto the hull of the defenses it hits, though the defender's Armor Tech still counts, and each Anti-Ballistic Missile on the target kills one incoming missile before any damage is worked out.

Group attack and group defend

In a group attack the whole combined fleet fights on the best Weapons Tech in the group, not on each player's own. Group defend works the same way on the defending side, and it covers the defender's own turrets too. One well researched member lifts every shot on their side.

What it does not do

It does nothing for a unit with no weapon. The Hephaestus platform, both Decoys, the Hermes Class Probe and the Shadow Probe all have 0 attack, and 10% of nothing is still nothing.
It does not touch rapid fire ratings, cargo, speed or fuel.
It does not make anything of yours tougher. Shields are Shield Tech and hull is Armor Tech.

Requirements

Research Lab level 4

Things that need Weapons Tech

Gauss Cannon needs level 3
Zeus Class needs level 11
Hephaestus Class Attack Platform needs level 12

All three have other requirements stacked on top of that, and the More Info button on the Research page lists the lot.

Scouting it

A spy report lists the target's tech levels, Weapons Tech included, but only once your espionage number on that target reaches 7. That means enough Espionage Tech and enough probes, or a Shadow Probe, which always brings back the full report.

Tips

Levels 1 to 6 together cost 50,400 ore and 12,600 crystal, about what two Poseidon Class Cruisers cost. Take them before you build anything serious.
Weapons Tech is 80% ore, and ore is the resource most players end up with too much of. It is the natural place to dump a surplus.
All three combat techs double every level and start in the same place: Weapons is 800 ore and 200 crystal, Armor is 1,000 ore, Shield is 200 ore and 600 crystal. If you are choosing between them, Weapons pays best against a target with a lot of small guns and Armor pays best against a target with a few big ones.
Run it in the Calculator before you spend. Both the attacker and the defender tech boxes have a Weapons Lvl field, so you can see exactly what one more level is worth against the fleet you expect to meet.
Research counts toward your Resources Spent like anything else you buy. Weapons Tech 10 on its own is worth 1,023 RSP, and newbie protection ends at 750, so pushing it early does move you out of the shallow end.