Reseach Help 2.5

[Kontaro]

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.

[anonymissimus]

You need to research the basic alien armor. (Also gets you nanocomp armor and electro rifle).
They start wearing that in May or June (on very hard) IIRC.

[Kontaro]

Ok, thanks, so it was something I was missing, unfortunately, I apparently lost shortly after as I was building a Dragon....so.... Guess I needa expand my bases faster..

[anonymissimus]

If you waste resources by building a dragon early...or at all...a dragon is slower than a gunboat, which they probably have as soon as you've built it so it will be shut down anyway as it cannot flee.
My priorities until the end of August are
1. advanced radar, to cover more nations or more of the territory of already covered nations, to keep them happy; aggressive building of additional bases only with the advanced radar right away, since the money for the basic radar would be wasted otherwise
2. nanocomp armor
3. laser and EM rifles

[DarkRain]

Just to answer some other questions: If you miss the bloodspider you'll miss on monomolecular blades, but they should still keep appearing later in the campaign, as for live aliens AFAIK one alien containment full of live aliens is all you'll need research-wise (at the time of writing — might change in the future with new research/mechanics as we advance the campaign)