You research the upgrades when the upgrade does more to enhance your fleet than adding more ships for the same cost.

I agreed with Reply #2, with the caviate that sometimes you should upgrade instead of increase fleet supply.

Its not as clear cut as upgrading weapons. The cost of upgrading Wave Cannons to +30% damage for the Vasari, for example, is less than the cost of building up your fleet to include 30% more ships.

I usually wait until I max out my supply points and I upgrade my shields, armor, or hull before researching the next tier. I upgrade weapons whenever I want, usually as soon as I can.

Wow, I have to say, I haven't really thought about the balance btw fleet supply and fleet up grades, lol.   Since in the early games you only have to deal with only one front maybe it is a good idea to up grade your ships than inceasing your ship supply. 

But then again, you will have a hard time to make up a balanced fleet, till later. With the new carriers, you can't afford to spam Lrfs anymore.  So...no, you should always up grade your ship supplies asap, whenever it was needed. 

Ok, this is what I am thinking right now:  in the early phase of the game, all the decisions are equally important, even one extra scout ship you make could mean life or death.  After the initial purchases with your starting resource, your economy could only allow you to make one decision every 20+  seconds, which cost averagly around 300 to 600 credits, So if you upgrade your weapons or armors instead of making more ships at the beginning, you are pretty much taking a sucker's bet...even when armor upgrades benefits absolutely EVERYTHING of your empire.

Here is why, according to me at least: the upgrade could take a while to be completed, during this time, you could not make any ships, that in turn decrease your small fleet's survival rate and fire power.   You will have to wait a while to up grade your first asteroid, which in turn cost you more resource and production rate.  In medium or large maps, early up grades also means, that you will have to wait longer to be able to split your force into multiple fleets, and that could lead to slower expansion rate for your empire.  Finally, since the upgrades would need some time to kick in, so during such periods, you won't enjoy any benefits with all the risks you are taking, yet the resource were spent, anyway.  All in all, I personally think only newbies should try up grades their fleet's armor or weapons whenever they could afford them, since beginners wouldn't know how to spent their resources, anyway.  That's the truth.

The Vasari have a solid economy 5 min into the game.  What are you talking about?  TEC have to WORK for their economy.  The Vasari just have to build scouts (and you do that anyway).

It really depends on how the game is going. If I happen to have a large fleet then a few cheap upgrades can be much more cost effective than more ships + it is permanent, normally faster too depending on how much factories you have.

Ah ha, finally a real reply to the topic in hand.  I came to realize the same math, that's why I have made the thread in the first place. 

Since the recent touch up on all the carriers, plus Kol's primary weapon is it's powerful auto cannons, I really want to reach the auto cannon weapons for the TEC asap, that's why I wanted to know the best time to reach the Advanced Metallurgy.  Do you think I should skip LRM and go straight to carriers in such research route, in consideration of the economy? And how many planets should I take control before I rush into the carriers? 

Fighters use auto cannon.

Well, you're going to do both (basic hull and fleet capacity upgrades) pretty much ASAP, and fleet capacity can be researched at the same time as one of the other two.  So if you choose to spend money on hull first in the interest of postponing that income penalty, you only set it back about 30 seconds, after which point you'll have the money to do fleet capacity anyway while your hull upgrade is cooking.  Assuming your income rate is about 12 creds per second, then in those 30 seconds, you save a grand total of 32.4 credits that would otherwise have been lost to the income penalty; if your crystal and metal income rates are hovering around 1 per second, you save a whopping 2.7 crystal/metal during that time.  I guess that's something, but *shrug*, I know I don't care.  Like I said earlier, seems like you should be doing basic hull research before your first fleet cap upgrade anyway.

hmm difficult question... i'd say.... 80% of the time i'd upgrade after i got a "fair" amount of ships (10-15-20)? then where i am able to que up at least 1 ship in the dock and afford the upgrade... so say...  1 ship being produced, upgrading.. then being able to build a new ship right after the first one's done (or start queing)

the other 20%.. well it's really a matter of wich position youre in... recources... winnig/ losing side.. planets..... allies??strategy...

late game, im pretty much able to que up my 50% of my economic or 50% combat tree (or 30% both.... not a calculation error.... lower tier research is cheaper) so theres no problem there

Yup, upgrades are permanent, that 1 extra ship you just got only helps you until it explodes. Basically a 10% increase in hull will make your ships last longer which will ultimately mean less resources spent replacing them and the further you go into the game the less difference a couple of ships will make. It all depends on your playstle, your opponents playstyle and the way the game is going.

I am not suggesting dumping everything into upgrading 5 cobolts or anything but taking the 30 seconds to upgrade early can really pay off later.

Depends on how much fighting they have been doing. Obviously if their ships never got shot in the 20 minutes then it would have been useless. But more health = less losses = more resources. Using your same example the player who researched it 20 minutes ago would have lost less ships in battle than the player who only researched it 5 minutes ago. The sooner you research it and the longer the game goes on the more you will benefit. The more health each individual ship has the less fragmentation in battle.