I'm not sure that there is a non-extremely complex or subjective formula which would accurately express this, given that each resource is quite distinct and there's so much diversity in squares (e.g. Farm/Solar working well compared to forest on high altitude rainy squares (which are pretty rare in most starting positions, leading to it being generally weak), and the interaction between various bonuses and improvements).
It seems perhaps more useful to go through all the possible combinations of improvements/bonuses/intrinsic properties in a spreadsheet which also outputs former turns, and see if anything looks like it should be changed.
I think of former actions like the unit design workshop. Things become obsolete. Solar/Farm become obsolete when tree farming and hybrid forest are developed. Farm/Solar can return to usefulness with condensers and mirrors.
Late game fungus (with the right Secret Projects) can be more useful than Forests.
For me it would be really unbalanced if only one faction or two factions can utilized forests.
Discounting bonuses from this will lose important context, the bonuses are very often key determining factors about which improvement to build and will produce a significant amount of extra resources especially in earlygame, and they're not *that* rare.
hm, I'm actually pretty okay with solar's current power at high altitudes at least, energy parks are already pretty great (and with EM's trick for raising land, it's not too former turn intensive). Farms may not be that good in the early game except in rareish situations (like Jungle and rainy Nutrient bonuses), but combined with other Nutrient boosts they are amazing crawling for specialist feeding.
Forests should be and are the staple which you're going to want on a lot of your land, and that seems fine. Trying to make forming work with zero forests seems silly.
Basically: Forests are the standard all round decent cheap option, all others have key but much more specialized uses.
Firstly, there isn't really that much impact from bonuses on what to build except in the early game (when they help in terms of resource restrictions); most improvements don't give a percentage increase, and therefore +2 minerals is +2 minerals no matter what's under it.That is simply not true! A rocky square with a +2 mineral special is golden! It can be mined/road to produce 7 minerals, which is huge in the early game.
That is simply not true! A rocky square with a +2 mineral special is golden! It can be mined/road to produce 7 minerals, which is huge in the early game.
If you have a map with poor average terrain, forest is your salvation; it can turn any non-rocky square into something halfway decent.
Opportunities in the early game come up for rainy/solar, but it really depends on the map.
But most maps have some rainy/rolling squares with 1000+ elevation that can be turned into 3/1/2+, which I would say is generally more useful that a forest even with a tree farm.
Also, the value of various FOPS vary based on the terrain and tech level.
In the early game, when there are relatively few drone suppression techs, you want enough food to grow to some reasonable level, but after that, the base does not need any more food.
But the early game seem to me to thrive on minerals
So forests give way to farm/condensor/enricher/solar/mirror, etc., depend on what is appropriate for each square.
In the mid game, things are variable. You have some energy multiplying techs. You have some specialists. You have some food improvements. You probably have a decent number of terraformers. So you have to weight it out: what does that base really need, and what is the best use of the underlying terrain at that stage.
that everything has its uses depending upon the underlying terrain, and that this varies based on the state of the game.
That's because you're only looking at balance between players, whereas I'm considering balance between strategies.Not every strategy is good. Just because one strategy doesn't work with the game, doesn't mean the game needs to be changed to make the strategy work.
You want to speculate on a game where someone researches Planetary Economics before Orbital Spaceflight?
Similarly, once would certainly be able to raise land before Hybrid Forest, and even build condensors on or nearby, since condensors affect nearby squares. So if we have a rainy/rolling square raised to 3000+ feet, it certainly has options that rival or exceed Hybrid forest
But my main point earlier is that solar/farm can be quite useful in the early game. By the time Hybrid Forest becomes available, we are in the mid-game, and to me it is fine for the balance to shift a bit.
But even in the mid-game, farm/collector is still a viable option as long as you raise the land to 3000+ feet
In the late game, farm/collector is still viable, though some might to forgo the energy and crawl as you suggest, but I rarely every do that. In the late game, I would rather develop remote lands and send crawlers to them via magtubes rather than crawl the squares that I can easily collect.
Not every strategy is good. Just because one strategy doesn't work with the game, doesn't mean the game needs to be changed to make the strategy work.
Plus I think you underestimate the power of fungus.
If you want to slightly nerf the late game supremacy of Nutrients, then you could cap the maximum number of useable sats to some high number, say 24.
Or one could possibly change sats to not give resources for specialists, but not being a modder myself, I am not sure that is implementable.
Actually, I don't see any of this as actually being a problem, just a preference for how you would rather have things operate. It is just the way it is. So food rules the late game. So what?
A mod limiting sats has the affect that only the first N food gets a +1/1/1 from sats; the rest of the food has to be justified based on specialists alone.
I can make a strong case that after the 1/1/1 sat bonus is limited, then working multiple resource squares makes more sense than more specialists, if that is your goal.
As for using defense pods to attack sats, I can build a lot of defense pods to defend my sats. I build a lot of defense pods anyway to defend against hostile missiles, particularly planet busters, so I don't think your mod is actually going to weaken sats very much. It will just mean that more of the economy shifts to space battles.
I agree that the sea is far more costly to terraform, especially since the formers are so much more expensive. However, there are 3 facilities available fairly early for sea bases that give bonuses, which can help balance a bit, which should be taken into account. Still, sea seems to max out its bonuses pretty early on the tech tree, and does not get anything equivalent to Hybrid Forest in the mid game.