of course you still get bonuses.
several damage and shields calculations inside botf have the tech level as direct multipliers in the formulas. So it's best to keep researching energy and weapons for that matter.

The Defiant also needs level 11 I think.

maybe you should posts such kinds of questions in the real botf afc, meaning here:

oh ok thanks

I ALWAYS carry on researching - albeit not as intensively - because you DO still get bonuses!

EVERY "production tech" in the game gives you a 2% bonus - Food, Energy, and Construction.

If you research a new level in one of these tech fields, you will gain a 2% production bonus - irrespective of whether you upgrade your buildings or not.

It doesn't sound like much, but those bonuses build up - obviously it is accumulative. I can eventually get my systems running on just one (Working) food and sometimes even energy structure.

The additional population blocks can then go into intel or construction.

MoE's word is law, then :p

I was looking at things from a ship-standpoint. So, I guess what could be ideal is to keep the subatomic simulators and the field-specific reasearch buildings from the minors online, but simply remove the population from the research buildings.

Also, it sounds like there is little point to researching weapons, computers, and propulsion.

the weapons are for battle damage. believe, every half-way realistic game (and botf is one of em) would add weapon tech as a direct multiplier in various damage-hit-calculations, so keep up the researching, it's the only way anyway since you cannot build ships the whole time when having peace since the maintenance costs .. ya know.

propulsion gives you more green space to go to with less outposts (tested and experienced this at various times.

computer tech gets you better intel, I'm sure.

I'm pretty positive that ships deal the same amount of damage since the day they were built. I can see propulsion increasing your ship ranges, though as that is noticeable in the game when researching levels 1-10.

Hmm... maybe computers does grant a bonus to the intel/research buildings; I can see that happening. But weapons.... I dunno. I wouldn't put money on it, but I still think that the ships themselves do not receive combat-related bonuses from research.

We'd need to test it. Too bad that'd take several hours to even prepare for it :p