So I am not sure I understand the real difference between beam, missile and kinetic weapons in crusade. For the most part, I always saw beams as a bit faster, missiles longer range, and kinetic a mix, but with the tech tree in crusades, so not sure.

It seems that kinetic weapons are, all around, the weakest. When compared to the other two at the same tech point, it does about half the damage, so unless they fire 2x as fast, they are far less valuable since they don't take up 50% of the mass either. Beams, which I always thought of as the fastest and lightest, still seem to do solid, but missiles seem to be the highest damage per shot.

What am I missing? I wanted to go Kinetic this game but it is so much weaker than the other two. For the first true weapon, it is 8.4 mass for 1 kinetic damage, 14.4 for 2 missile and 10.8 + 1 Elerium for 2 beam. So no special cost for kinetic or missile, but still half the damage of missile for over half the mass.