Pilots (and ship schematics in general) for better ships only. Ship weapons are more complex, if overall easier - you need to follow 4 directions:
1. Engineers, naturally, for prerequisites, but not neccesarily many of them (unless to get to know more ship types)
2. Push Personal weaponry forward (you need to get firearm tech to a pretty decent level before you can dream of craft energy weapons)
3. General/Industrial tech breakthroughs, stemming from 1) but also from researching ship components (starting with Nuclear Fuel)
4. You do need to research Academy and Raider booty to complete some basic preqs for the industrial part of the problem
In general, when you see the "Light Craft Weapons" popup, you're on the right track, and you'll probably be able to go all the way to missiles, which are awesome but also quite expensive.
In Extended there is an alternate craft weapon path based on looting enemy craft weapons.