So I recently came back to this game, 2.4 was last I played, and so I started a 2.5 game... I was aware that the ground laser weapons were farther back in the tree, but figured it just meant I was going to be using alien weapons a bit.
So anyway, as I was playing, I managed to get a scout, fighter, and harvester disassembled, checked a live Taman, and started seeing Seevars on the battlefield(altho after a crash, I haven't seen any blood spiders yet) I research the 3 plasma weapons I've gotten from the enemies, the kerrblade, and everything from the crashed/landed ships....and...no lasers...no research at all...
Do I need to get more live captures to get to the next 'phase' of the game to research lasers? Or did I miss something by not finding any bloodspiders? I wasn't able to, as I lost soon after when I could only find fighters that my own fighters couldn't fight...and was in the middle of building a dragon fighter.
If I do need more live aliens, then any tips for getting them with the stunrod? Apparently I don't have enough types of corpses/live aliens to research gas 'nades.