Genejack Factories are the facility I understand the least in this game. I know the general attributes (more minerals, more drones) but I really don't know how to use these things. Do you always build them, do you only build them under certain conditions, do you avoid them entirely with particular factions?
Pair them with Punishment Spheres. Otherwise, not worth the bother.
Pair them with Punishment Spheres. Otherwise, not worth the bother.
Come to think of it, GJ Factory simply comes to late for my taste. At this stage of the game you have always something better to build, like yet another chopper. Or yet another nuke. :)
Pair them with Punishment Spheres. Otherwise, not worth the bother.
Punishment spheres will do far more damage to your research than just cutting it by 10% and putting that 10% into psych (which will far more than compensate for the extra drone.)Come to think of it, GJ Factory simply comes to late for my taste. At this stage of the game you have always something better to build, like yet another chopper. Or yet another nuke. :)
Of course, with mineral focus and without ecodamage being the limiting factor, spending on a GJ factory now means you can get 50% more choppers and nukes from that base in the future.
If you're building Punishment Sphere, you're probably pursuing a specific strategy, most likely Free Market with a massive Army... which is my favorite. :)
But anything where you want to eliminate drone at the expense of nearly everything else.
If you're building Punishment Sphere, you're probably pursuing a specific strategy, most likely Free Market with a massive Army... which is my favorite. :)
Of course, your research will suffer horribly, pretty much all it gives you is a lot of cash for your war machine (and that's assuming energy focus or mixed focus and high Economy slider, which is the only case where it's worth it). Which is useful when the ecodamage mechanic makes a serious mineral focus unfeasible...but if it's possible to go full-on in minerals (even if you have to drop FM to do it), that will give you a substantially larger army with no need for punishment spheres.QuoteBut anything where you want to eliminate drone at the expense of nearly everything else.
Which means you're planning to win before the research lag hurts you too much.
One important thing to remember with Free Market, you can generally build all the Projects much faster than the other factions.
Punishment spheres only hurt the lab output for a single base only, too.
and you can steal all the tech you need.
As far as ecodamage, just build all the "eco" things they have when a base starts to show eco damage. For example the Centauri Preserves are a must build with FM.
If you're building Punishment Sphere, you're probably pursuing a specific strategy, most likely Free Market with a massive Army... which is my favorite. :) The strategy was really a game changer for me once I discovered it.
That still won't let you run 60 minerals in a base under FM; with a mod I'm working on, that will be possible with Green. Though just for support it will work, unless the enemy identifies that base (not hard, I think enemy units show their home base) and spends what is needed to take it.
I never asked - how exactly are you planning to change things that are firmly hard-coded?
Second thing - are you sure you're taking into account all indirect results of your changes? Like the fact that you give mineral boost to Deirdre, already a very strong faction
and you make Believers weaker, already a shunned faction?
That you can make Manifold Nexus on par with Monsoon Jungle?
What about Tree Farms and other ecological facs, will they matter less or more?
It would take me a long time to describe pros and cons of each faction, so maybe another time, but I'm afraid they're far from balanced. The top three factions are Uni, Domai and Hive, and it's not just my opinion. Uni for techs, Domai and Hive because the INDUSTRY SE choice is widely considered to be the most important one in the game. If you give any kind of boost to Yang or Domai, you do the opposite of balancing.
I can list the factions in my personal order of strength, but it's really subjective the lower it gets. Particularly Sparta and Believers can be stronger in skilled hands, they're simply not really my style. This breakdown works for me, though.
Tier 1: Uni, Domai, Hive
Tier 2: Aki, Morgan, Deirdre
Tier 3: PK, Data Angels, Sparta, Believers
Tier 4: Pirates, Cult
I don't count Aliens, because nobody counts them. They're strong and unbalanced for MP games.