Small weapons and armors cost

[TheTrooper]

I feel that small arms and armors tend to get switched too easily. The irrisory production cost of gauss and lasers when compared to assault rifles and carbines makes too easy to go from solid bullets to beams. I mean in ww2 only few countries could switch from bolt action to semi-automatic rifles, while for others like Italy and UK producing an smg became a matter of reducing costs as much as possible. I feel that while we should be able to field large quantitative of lasers and plasma immediately. In mid-late game we shouldn't be able to disregard the fact that if your industrial infrastructure is not sufficient, fielding advanced armors and weaponry should be a big deal. This would make game more interesting and definetely more realistic. Think of the Imperium in 40k, they field the lasgun and the flak armor because it's much cheaper than producing caparace and hot shots las for everyone.

best

[zgrssd]

The problem is that your examples were early automatic weapons. And even among those, we had the AK-47 (design started 45, introduction by 49). And that one was mass-produceable:
"Even after more than seven decades, the model and its variants remain the most popular and widely used rifles in the world because of: their reliability under harsh conditions, low production cost compared to contemporary Western weapons, availability in virtually every geographic region, and ease of use. The AK has been manufactured in many countries and has seen service with armed forces as well as irregular forces and insurgencies worldwide. The model was the basis for developing many other types of individual, crew-served and specialised firearms. As of 2004, "[o]f the estimated 500 million firearms worldwide, approximately 100 million belong to the Kalashnikov family, three-quarters of which are AK-47s"."

Someone would have had to develop the "AK-47 of Laser Weapons" in the millennia since humanity left their home System.

At wich point 5.17. comes into play:
"Research has been modelled as if the game’s turn scale was actually higher. It would be doubtful our survivors in Shadow Empire could in reality actually advance from bullet-spitting rifles to plasma weapons in less than the span of a lifetime. However [...] much left-over knowledge can still be found on the Planet. It would be good to look at research as partially research and partially learning to re-understand old documentation and machinery."

[TheTrooper]

Yes in a sense you're right, they're not jumping from a rifle to another, rather re-learning how to produce and use the lost ones. Though i would argue that the process of re-learning and rebuilding would include the fact that mistakes are made and impractical designs are made. You quoted point 5.17, he says of course part learning part research, i feel that therefore advanced weapons cannot be immediately practical then. We're not just using old manuals as he says but also trying to partially figure out how it was made in the past, a halfway between a prototype and specifics you already had. Also he mentions learning to re-understand old research and machinery, hell some arrangements made to reach the moon in the 60's are not available to us despite being much advanced and mistakes in rebuilding a ship that could reach the moon would be aplenty. I think man you made a good point but there is room for a bit of realism. Besides i think it would be cool, if you think that you have a bad start with little metals and rares and you're facing an adversary wich has an advantage over you in resources and technology to use them the game would be much more intriguing. On the other hand if you have the luck you can have this advantage and annihilate free folks or minors still using bolt actions.

In a way i believe that if you wanna make Starship Troopers like infantry you gotta harshly pay for it, on the other hand if you want cheap "basiji" like infantrymen that you can spam and send to certain death you should pay way less, making your grunt design important.