I mostly like the research system as it is. As others have stated, getting to the end of the tree is not that easy - particularly if you research all the little nooks and crannies.
There is already a degree of (military) specialization, although I'll admit there is next to no specialization/diversification in the Civil segment. On the one hand, Kodiaks, battleships and Cobalts use the autocannon weapons, which have a long and expensive research line. Bombers, LRM frigates, Dunovs and Mardas use missiles, which also have a long and expensive research line. Capital ships, if you choose to build many of them as your main (or only) fleet, have their own long and expensive research line to get enough of them to go around.
However, you simply can't play a winning strategy -- unless you are constantly acquiring new planets -- without the colonization techs, and the Orbital Refinery (and arguably also the cargo hold techs). And just the concept of constantly acquiring new planets is next to impossible on anything but the most gigantic maps, without first adopting this economic strategy. The civic tree seems like a time-consuming but necessary effort that everyone has to invest into, which is the antithesis of diversification.
In response to TokenSDragon: if you are going to play heavily on research early in the game, put most of your logistics points towards military labs, and research things like hangar bays and improved gauss capacitors. Then build up armor and missile weapon tech. While you're researching, other players (particularly AIs) are likely to be building armadas of Cobalts, which they will "rush" you with after a while. To defend against this, you need to expand steadily but SLOWLY, fortifying each colony you capture before you move to the next. That way, whenever the enemy's main force reaches your outermost outposts, you'll be ready to put up a defense.
Also, it helps to be nimble: don't go with a completely static defensive strategy; keep a small fleet of ships around (Cobalts are good early game) to help your defenses when they aren't being very effective. Another wonderful thing about Cobalts is that they're the only formidable fighting ship ("formidable" mostly meaning a great number of Cobalts, since a single one isn't much) which costs zero Crystal. So you can save all your crystal for research!
As for the idea of reducing the cost of research at the expense of time, I think this is a great idea. Time IS money in SINS - so the time hit should be significant if you "choose" to research a tech slower, rather than researching it at a reasonable speed for the existing cost. The time cost should be so great that someone else with the same resource income as you, but who spends *more* of their percentage of income on research, should be able to out-tech you even if you're both doing research. Because the money you don't spend on tech is going to be spent somewhere else - and this needs to be balanced carefully, lest people sail through the game spending very little on research whilst building a large fleet of ships with their spare change.
The problem is that you can research things at the same time as you gain resources, attack people, build stations, etc. So the amount of "time" you lose isn't across the board - it's research time only. If you build a large-scale fleet of low tech ships, and continue researching at a low cost all the way to the Kodiak Heavy Cruiser, you can basically end the game with your large scale by overwhelming a player who's gone the "normal" tech route and spent much more of their income on research. So this should be carefully balanced if it's offered at all.
As for the posts that make a case for totally doing away with a resource-based research, I reject those on principle.
Regards,
-Allquixotic
