WtP SP costs

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

This is a discussion about SP cost in WtP. I'll start with excellent analysis by lolada.
Keep in mind that this is preliminary discussion and cost may change if we curb economical growth in here:
http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=21451.0


Early special projects

They feel good - those in first 100 turns - cost of 300-600 minerals and techs trade between AI. So usually factions get at least 1 special projects and player can snatch 1 or 2. Its expensive enough that player can't start and finish two at a same time on trascend - and thats great. I find it when I can get two of the projects i want game becomes super easy. (For example get HGP and Virtual world and drone problem solved easy game).
I like that you priced The Merchant Exchance at 200. Its fringe SP. The Command Nexus is strong, but 800 was way too much. Its 400 now.. but you are right that morale is strong. I wouldn't mind even 500 min cost there.
Conclusion here: early to mid plays fine.

Note 1: crawlers are unused here, maybe even not researched.

Mid projects

This is the area of 400-800 cost projects. I think it stills plays fine, bases gets 20-30 minerals and in general it takes 20-30 turns. Now one can get projects quite faster - for example Drones are notorious with 20% discount, but ok thats their strength. Presumably player can pick up +2 industry (Fund + Planned). Actually one can trick this and pick this SE config near the end of projects just to finish it and save 20% turns - say 20% of 30.. save 6 turns. Or switch to +2 industry (or more) and just rush it cheaper.


Note 2: Crawlers are available - and they can swing into player favor significantly (120 minerals is a lot). Apparently AI can use crawler - but i doubt its anywhere as good as player - i didn't notice they use it but i want watching carefully
Note 3: Energy rushing - again  Thinker AI can energy rush but i didn't observe it yet. I think it heavily favors the player.

Now its not that bad yet this can stay as is.. its hard to build crawlers and there is no many bases. Energy is still limited. And many AIs are alive and well and they compete. So lets say its fine.

Note 4: There's one offender here: The Cloudbase Academy - its 1200 minerals. Now thats a lot and its not good. Bases with 30 minerals are rare - at this point there's no even Genejack Factory or it just gets available and its hard to get 20+ minerals due to ecological damage. This means it takes 30-50 turns to build it.. reduce for good industry somewhat. Here's the problem: it takes so much time to build that player has ton of time to steal techs and prepare now 3-4-5 crawlers or more and build this project. I played 4-5 full games and i could build Cloudbase Academy in every if i wanted. AI actually got much faster to tech than me and they can't finish the project anyway.

I think this big issue - and it gets worse later. Now good thing is The Cloudbase Academy is not that good  Its good but Needlejets are awful for base attack. And they die in raids so its not like they are so great - one can build them without Aerospace Complex. I usually build 2-3 Aerospace Complexes for morale edge. So it turns out that its mostly good for Interceptor morale and for very late game Satellites. You moved them back to E11 - good move - so i often didn't even rush to get this special project. But for example in my AAR i got it anyway just because AI was taking so long to build it.

Note 5: If you had made this SP cost 600 or 800 then its totally possible AI would get it before player which would be good thing. I lost other cheaper SP becuase i couldn't get tech in time.. Gains got Superconductor, Drones got Manifold Nexus (i didnt even get the tech in time).. Angels got Theory of Everything - and i started that one - it took me some turns to amass crawler. Or as you said if you amass crawlers and spend on one SP you can't get other. But if its so expensive you have time for 3-4 waves of crawlers.

Late mid-game and late game


Here are 800-3000 special projects. Now these have that same issue, but there's more to it. First base mineral production does not go as fast.. you are lucky with 50 mineral base - and it does go to 70 in late midgame. Eco damage slows down mineral rise a lot.

That means that for example The Cyborg Factory (2000) takes at least around 30-40 turns. Depends on when you get it.. its quite possible to get those techs earlier and it takes 50 turns to build.. industry might help a bit. Now this is infinite time for player - one can always build this before AI. Singularity Inductor (+50% minerals everywhere) is same and there are a few.

Note 6: you have made Cloudbase Academy issue worse. AI will never get this projects unless player lets it. Its not fail all SP - AI will manage to build some 600-800 lategame secret projects (like Neural Amplifier, Nethack Terminus and thats great) - because AI do get these techs before player.

Note 7: game scale - now its not ok to build secret project for 30+ turns.. Its ok to build secret project 30 turns at mid game.. say the game takes 250 turns. If i build it at t150 i get to use it for 50+ turns thats ok. Even 20 turns is ok. But if I get SP at turn t200-t210 its not ok to build it say 30-40 turns. AI will never get any use of it and that perspective matters. Late projects should note take as long or longer to produce than early projects. Its game over, it should be quicker.

The result is in my 4-5 games so far and in many in vanilla/thinker. I don't build these projects at all - they are not needed, it takes too long. I build two for fun (I got one in AAR) and i could build them anyway whenever i wanted because AI will take forever to finish them. Finally for example Ascent to Transcedence - 5000 minerals. I think it is impossible for player to lose ^^ I started it in one game and Zakharov started it in base that needed 300 turns to complete it. I started it in 100 mineral base and i needed 50 turns - i completed it in 4 or 5 with crawlers.

I hope that was clear ^^. Now to some more disscussion and possible changes.

Leaving it expensive

- It has all downsides described above. Positive is that you force player to spend a lot of crawler or give up getting secret projects. But slowing player this was is not really possible - most will just quick the game and consider it won. I really don't like it because i feel i can win at any time once these OP project become available - i could monitor it but i doubt AI will ever rush these projects. So I'd like this changed.

Making it much cheaper than now

- My first idea was to limit costs a lot - thats one simple and likely good solution. AI is perfectly capable of building up 800 mineral projects in late game before player - I've seen that much. I think this mod is about challenge and trying up features - and good challenge is to let AI get many projects before the player.

Suggestion 1: limit all non-broken projects to 800 mineral cost.. 1000+ is too much for AI.. if player gets ahead its ahead let it be. But on transcend and WTP not many can do that - i think i play at decently high level. One could object but there's no point.. making it expensive doesn't work as explained above.

Suggestion 2: Broken projects

Totally broken: move to Tech 11+ or remove from the game.. removing is a shame i like what you did with Cloning wats just no so excessive - i suggest 1600 min max
Broken - move late and 800 - 1000 min cost to allow players to try them without tediousness

I made secret projects list below at the end for details.

Suggestion 3:

Removing rushing secret projects. Both energy and crawlers. I start to really like this. They can be built manually if they are not too expensive and its fair race then. Someone have better tech, someone has better industry.

alternative: just remove crawlers completely if you can't stop them from rushing projects

Suggestion 4:

Rushing with energy - 1. remove. 2. At least make it even more expensive. If the projects are cheaper in minerals - as they should be i think - then i would double the rushing cost to 8 energy per mineral.

Secret projects - changes and some comments

- Cloning Vats (totally broken) you can leave it at tech 13 and put something normal like 1600 minerals. People can try it for fun.. it is fun.. it takes 16 turns for 100 mineral base someone will build it that way.

- The Bulk Matter transmitter (strong, not broken) - 2 minerals per base - i don't know why you rated this as 3000 minerals - its not that great. its 4-5 mineral per base with % bonuses, it hardly matters lategame.. this can as well be 800 mineral Tech 10 project - it will be fun to see AI gets it before player

- Clinical immortality (broken in sense game over literally) - double votes - just should be late.. once you click this its game over anyway.. you can make it expensive.. now if you want AI to be able to win ever.. price it 1000 minerals not more.

- The Cyborg Factory (strong, kind of broken) - elites everywhere - should be maybe C11, 12 where its now but at  800 cost its fun but it takes time to put to use.. build units and do warfare. There's no point in pricing it high - just place it late enough, tech 10 can be gotten relatively early.

- The Manifold Harmonics (strong, broken) - this should be 800 and at least tech 8-10 in my opinion.. maybe not if you nerf that fungus we discuss

- The Nano Factory - (50% upgrade, heal) - its really great project both healing and upgrades are awesome - you priced it only 400 min.. this should be 600 at least

- The Network Backbone (broken) - having it at D13 or where it is does the job. But then no need to price it more than 800-1000. You won't get to use it more than 10 turns or so

- The Self-Aware colony (very strong or broken) - i never built it actually - its so late.. no need to price more than 800-1000

- The Space Elevator - same as above

- The Telepathic Matrix (strong) - now this one is weird - it comes late but could be used a bit for fun. Its not really needed because everyone solved drones by this point. To put it to use one should scrap all Recreation Commons/Hologram theatres and will save some money. In that sense its not even broke.. it would be broken in midgame.. So I don't see why price this more than 800.. and it can be at tech 9-10.. no need to move it later.

- The Ascent to Transcendence (5000) - if AI won't rush it it should be much cheaper.. 2k or something like that.. its mostly clicking end turn. Someone might even lose the race but i doubt it.


Ah that was a lot, but it was fun ^^. Maybe we can make experimental version and test some of these ideas - it looks good on paper to me.  But i have been wrong plenty of time so it will be interesting to see what you think.

[Nexii]

One thing about SPs is their value changes a lot depending on map size, like EFFIC SE. If you have 10 bases the value is much different than 30. I do wish they had put some kind of map scaling for SPs like they did with tech.

My opinion is there's really only 2 what I would call 'broken' SPs in the stock game. Weather Paradigm, and Cloning Vats. CVs you have right, I think I have them at around E12. WP I had requiring higher tech, B5 or so. I guess 600 cost kind of has the same effect.

I cap out my SPs at around base amounts, 500 or 600 at the top end. But I can see how they ended up doubled in cost or so with heavy crawler use/abuse.

I'm not sure how much the AI cancels in progress SPs in WtP, but in the stock game it does it a lot. I found that increasing SP costs actually degraded AI play.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

First of all, I've increased their cost for a single purpose: to let factions compete for them more fierce. Discovering it first should not guarantee building it first. Less advanced but stronger economy should have a chance too. It seems I achieved it. However, some late game projects got too expensive. I should adjust them based on actual economical strength at the time.
That is actually strange why late projects seem so difficult to build as I assume later project will be build using crawlers with the combined empire strength. Looks like this is not the case.

Now when we are talking about human vs. AI then former will always be more cunning and will find more exploits. That is why AI is given raw economical advantage on tougher levels. The best way to level that is to teach AI to do the same. Like rushing SP with crawlers and money in this case. However, this is pretty tedious and difficult task and result is not guaranteed either. Wrong tuning may render AI stupider. SMACX AI is mostly single turn heuristics. It doesn't carry plans like multi turns SP rushing preparation, etc. In this regard the only option to help AI would be to disable crawler rush. I believe it is possible to teach it money rush since it is single turn operation. This disables whole empire participation in SP building which is sad. I always imagined how people across whole empire contribute to a single epic building.

Another option would be to limit crawler/unit rushing by some portion of initial cost: 50-40-30-20%. This way player can still concentrate whole empire efforts on it but for hefty penalty. Essentially, this translates to building SP faster but for double-triple price and corresponding economical impact. I think this is fair. SP hurry cost need to be increased too to match it.
Let me summarize it. We can allow external aid for SP building but with severe penalty to make project choice more fair. Let's say you have three equally productive bases. You can build three projects (one in each) at normal speed risking to not finish it in time or you can build just one and let two other bases contribute at 50%, thus, rushing it twice as fast. Proportion can be adjusted.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

One thing about SPs is their value changes a lot depending on map size, like EFFIC SE. If you have 10 bases the value is much different than 30. I do wish they had put some kind of map scaling for SPs like they did with tech.

I hear you, man. However, it would be a revolution to implement something like that. Besides, it would not be easy just to correctly adjust their cost by map size. It would require tons of play testing. Unfeasible.
🙁

[Nexii]

I've seen the stock AI rush SPs sometimes. It's more apparent on bigger SPs like Ascent. Though it's inconsistent about doing it.

Yea rushing is a harder thing to fix. Maybe crawlers should turn in at 75% or something. Better than disbanding units at 50%, but worse than direct transfer at 100%.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

The Command Nexus is strong, but 800 was way too much. Its 400 now.. but you are right that morale is strong. I wouldn't mind even 500 min cost there.

Morale/defense SP do not scale that well as economical ones. It doesn't really make difference for them between 400 and 500.

Note 4: There's one offender here: The Cloudbase Academy - its 1200 minerals. Now thats a lot and its not good. Bases with 30 minerals are rare - at this point there's no even Genejack Factory or it just gets available and its hard to get 20+ minerals due to ecological damage.

You may have researched it too early by luck. Cloudbase Academy is L10 and Genejack Factory is L6.
I agree it is too expensive and not that important. May reduce the cost of AC as well.

I played 4-5 full games and i could build Cloudbase Academy in every if i wanted. AI actually got much faster to tech than me and they can't finish the project anyway.

That is normal when you have crawlers already. Then you can cherry pick.

Suggestion 1: limit all non-broken projects to 800 mineral cost.. 1000+ is too much for AI.. if player gets ahead its ahead let it be. But on transcend and WTP not many can do that - i think i play at decently high level. One could object but there's no point.. making it expensive doesn't work as explained above.

I plan to do that if we agree on reducing external help proportionally.

Rushing with energy - 1. remove. 2. At least make it even more expensive. If the projects are cheaper in minerals - as they should be i think - then i would double the rushing cost to 8 energy per mineral.

I believe they are already quite expensive to buy. 800 minerals project is 2400 credits. That is like 20 turns savings in mid game. Especially when we nerf economy in general. I consider it to keep it at x4 for hurry cost and to reduce mineral contribution to 50% for all units and crawlers. Then crawlers will be no more important for SP mineral rush as you can do the same with units.
We can try it out and adjust hurry cost later if needed.

- Cloning Vats (totally broken) you can leave it at tech 13 and put something normal like 1600 minerals. People can try it for fun.. it is fun.. it takes 16 turns for 100 mineral base someone will build it that way.

Agree. Actually, I was pondering whether I could nerf the project itself a little. Say to stop base size growth beyond nutrients/4. So one would need more than 4 nutrients per citizen to grow it further. Just a thought.

- The Bulk Matter transmitter (strong, not broken) - 2 minerals per base - i don't know why you rated this as 3000 minerals - its not that great. its 4-5 mineral per base with % bonuses, it hardly matters lategame.. this can as well be 800 mineral Tech 10 project - it will be fun to see AI gets it before player

Help typo. It is actually +50% (as any mineral multiplying facility). So it is broken.

- Clinical immortality (broken in sense game over literally) - double votes - just should be late.. once you click this its game over anyway.. you can make it expensive.. now if you want AI to be able to win ever.. price it 1000 minerals not more.

Agree. Same note on nerfing effect. Could be 25-50% instead.

- The Cyborg Factory (strong, kind of broken) - elites everywhere - should be maybe C11, 12 where its now but at  800 cost its fun but it takes time to put to use.. build units and do warfare. There's no point in pricing it high - just place it late enough, tech 10 can be gotten relatively early.

This is just a free facility project. It is no more broken than facility itself. I set default morale to Very Green now. So even with all facilities you get them at Veratans only and then it is hard to get promoted and easy to die.

- The Manifold Harmonics (strong, broken) - this should be 800 and at least tech 8-10 in my opinion.. maybe not if you nerf that fungus we discuss

Eh. It's pretty situational. You need to be locked at +3 PLANET to get most of it losing other opportunities. And even then with recently modified fungus yield it is not a threat to others anymore. Planet liking factions could seriously benefit from it, though.

- The Nano Factory - (50% upgrade, heal) - its really great project both healing and upgrades are awesome - you priced it only 400 min.. this should be 600 at least

Again, great but situational. Upgrade is limited - you can upgrade only what you have and it is just a discount. So some limited economical advantage. Healing is speed up just slightly. So you'll end up with 100% health instead on 80% and this advantage is only in a field. Definitely some combat and economical advantage but you won't crush twice as strong opponent with it. Units still keep dying often.

- The Network Backbone (broken) - having it at D13 or where it is does the job. But then no need to price it more than 800-1000. You won't get to use it more than 10 turns or so

Agree. I actually was completely at lost how to price it.

- The Self-Aware colony (very strong or broken) - i never built it actually - its so late.. no need to price more than 800-1000

Agree.
Also can be tuned to save not 50% but 25% or so.

- The Space Elevator - same as above

Not sure this one is broken. What do you get besides unlimited insertion range?

- The Telepathic Matrix (strong) - now this one is weird - it comes late but could be used a bit for fun. Its not really needed because everyone solved drones by this point. To put it to use one should scrap all Recreation Commons/Hologram theatres and will save some money. In that sense its not even broke.. it would be broken in midgame.. So I don't see why price this more than 800.. and it can be at tech 9-10.. no need to move it later.

I still think it is broken as it is a complete drone solution. Nothing in game should be absolute. Better be to multiply drone facilities effect of something.

- The Ascent to Transcendence (5000) - if AI won't rush it it should be much cheaper.. 2k or something like that.. its mostly clicking end turn. Someone might even lose the race but i doubt it.

Agree. I priced it that high to let the game continue even after all tech are discovered! I guess it is difficult to achieve.
🙁

[lolada]

First of all, I've increased their cost for a single purpose: to let factions compete for them more fierce. Discovering it first should not guarantee building it first. Less advanced but stronger economy should have a chance too. It seems I achieved it. However, some late game projects got too expensive. I should adjust them based on actual economical strength at the time.

Yeah i believe currently at your mod good pricing is 400-800 (early - late) minerals for competition. Over that player easily wins if he wants to. Player wins due to either crawler or energy rush. Pricing them less than 400 means first faction that techs SP will most often build it as well.

As you said.. if we now nerf economy, boreholes or minerals, growth it should be taken into account.

That is actually strange why late projects seem so difficult to build as I assume later project will be build using crawlers with the combined empire strength. Looks like this is not the case.

Its not strange ^^ they are not difficult to build with combined empire power, they are easy for the player. AI doesn't rush or rush rarely - feels to me like that. We don't have to change this quickly - this could be tested by watching AI; there's chance I am wrong here. But from my xp so far i had tons of time to build as many crawlers are wanted for those heavy 1000+ projects.

I think I read somewhere in Thinker thread that AI will energy rush secret projects in some cases - but its coded to let player win. We could ask Induktio maybe this can be changed. If AI rushes only near finish.. its no wonder they can't get those big projects.

Now when we are talking about human vs. AI then former will always be more cunning and will find more exploits. That is why AI is given raw economical advantage on tougher levels. The best way to level that is to teach AI to do the same. Like rushing SP with crawlers and money in this case. However, this is pretty tedious and difficult task and result is not guaranteed either. Wrong tuning may render AI stupider. SMACX AI is mostly single turn heuristics. It doesn't carry plans like multi turns SP rushing preparation, etc. In this regard the only option to help AI would be to disable crawler rush. I believe it is possible to teach it money rush since it is single turn operation. This disables whole empire participation in SP building which is sad. I always imagined how people across whole empire contribute to a single epic building.

Yeah its a bit sad.. but AI programming is a pain. I would try simple solutions. If people don't hate disabling Crawler project rushing that can be removed. Then energy rush can be a thing - it just needs to be expensive enough; provided that we can tell AI to rush projects with most of its money.
Now i picked up on rushing - I usually play with no rushing self-rule.. but its almost impossible to build those projects without crawlers ^^. I'd rather have it buildable in reasonable time and give AI chance to win.

Another option would be to limit crawler/unit rushing by some portion of initial cost: 50-40-30-20%. This way player can still concentrate whole empire efforts on it but for hefty penalty. Essentially, this translates to building SP faster but for double-triple price and corresponding economical impact. I think this is fair. SP hurry cost need to be increased too to match it.

This looks like half-measure on its own. If you make cheaper projects (up to 800 for example) and heavily restrict this rushing it might be ok-ish. Then player can spam ton of crawlers to get project faster or to just get 1 turn ahead of AI to win. Its still player only advantage likely but at a heavy cost. It also allows AI more space to win because player might not have that many Crawlers.

Let me summarize it. We can allow external aid for SP building but with severe penalty to make project choice more fair. Let's say you have three equally productive bases. You can build three projects (one in each) at normal speed risking to not finish it in time or you can build just one and let two other bases contribute at 50%, thus, rushing it twice as fast. Proportion can be adjusted.

I am for severe option or no crawler rushing. It doesn't even matter how much crawler cost - but i think its good at 120 minerals i wouldn't change it. Its valuable to crawl in mines and condensers, or borehole.

So if at 50% its 60 minerals.. and thats around 7.5-12.5% of the project. I'd cut it to 5% = 800*0.05 = calc.. 40 minerals. So if Crawler turns 33% resources into minerals - you get 40 minerals per crawler.

Player must use 20 crawlers to complete project from zero to 800. And its doable i can tell you that in AAR i have i dont know 20-30 bases (its normal map) and they get strong. Player can also build a project for say 5 turns, smack in few crawlers and energy rush the rest.

[lolada]

You may have researched it too early by luck. Cloudbase Academy is L10 and Genejack Factory is L6.
I agree it is too expensive and not that important. May reduce the cost of AC as well.

Yes - well AI got it and then they steal so much its crazy there's tons of probes. It took me quite awhile to get the tech and I don't know if AI even started the project. I got it in trade i think from Deirdre. Then sometimes AI start the project in weak base (they choose one base in top 1/3 of best.. they don't go for best base). So it can take them something silly like 60-80 turns to build such expensive SP.

I plan to do that if we agree on reducing external help proportionally.

I believe they are already quite expensive to buy. 800 minerals project is 2400 credits. That is like 20 turns savings in mid game. Especially when we nerf economy in general. I consider it to keep it at x4 for hurry cost and to reduce mineral contribution to 50% for all units and crawlers. Then crawlers will be no more important for SP mineral rush as you can do the same with units.
We can try it out and adjust hurry cost later if needed.

Yeah they are expensive at start and to midgame. Lategame there's so much energy i had 500+ per turn it goes up to 1000. So player can rush buy complete 800 min SP = 3200 energy; in 6-7 turns at 50% eco.

It would be interesting if this formula would scale somehow simply. SP initial cost/10.. so 800 projects 8 energy per min.. 400min project 4 energy per min. As simple as that. But its not really that much important i suppose.

About changing/nerfing specific project, we could have that discussion. Some sure deserved to be nerfed. Still its part of fun to have them strong - total drone solution - yes please.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Yeah they are expensive at start and to midgame. Lategame there's so much energy i had 500+ per turn it goes up to 1000. So player can rush buy complete 800 min SP = 3200 energy; in 6-7 turns at 50% eco.

Then we have to reduce energy development. However, keep in mind that total energy collection grows with empire size. There is nothing you can do about it and that is why SP cost should grow somehow at least. 😜

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Here is preliminary plan. Conservative changes at first.

• Crawler help to project at 50% their mineral cost. That makes it same as disbanding units including crawlers themselves.
• SP hurry cost is x4 as now.
• Teach AI to hurry SP.
• Lower end game SP cost a little.

[lolada]

    Crawler help to project at 50% their mineral cost. That makes it same as disbanding units including crawlers themselves.
    SP hurry cost is x4 as now.
    Teach AI to hurry SP.
    Lower end game SP cost a little.

- Disbanding units gives back 50%.. Crap. Well 50% is step in right direction.

- About SP pricing cost - suggestion is that AI can get project in reasonable number of turns so that player is not guaranteed to win the race. That can be done with cheaper cost and teaching AI to rush. We just need to find a balance. If its late SP it must not take too long because the game actually ends.

- A little more than little for some ^^

I wanted to comment on few SP.

The Weather Paradigm - its value drops quickly when its moved later in tech - WTP already moved it to D3. I think this SP is overpowered with Thinker mode and E1 tech in vanilla, but in WTP is ok. Its pricey at 600 minerals and by the time you get it, it doesn't feel like a win. So i'd rate this project as good - but i'd rather have some other projects if i could.

The Cloudbase Academy - its not nearly as good in WTP as in vanilla because defense is so strong. Simply said Needlejets die ^^. Combat is interesting - Infantry attackers are actually back - that 25% vs base is  really important. Copters are also heavily nerfed in this sense - they simply cannot kill more than 1-2 armored units as they get badly damaged. They are useful to snipe several unarmored formers out of the base tho.
Satellites are very late tech so that part is of limited use as well.

The Hunter-Seeker algorithm - I think i overvalued this project a bit - its awesome, but there's but. AI uses lots of ench. probes once they get the tech and that counters it. Nethack Terminus also counters it - AI builds this SP. Both come later so Hunter Seeker is still great help.

The Virtual World - This project is exceptionally good - on border of broken good. Usually you want Network node in every base. One good fix is to make Hologram Theatres cheaper a bit and cost less maintenance. They are 60/3 now and every base needs them. Hologram theatre is basically Recreation Commons + 50% psych. Psych is great for big bases.

All Xeno - Green - Fungus projects - they are great for green factions and should not be cheap.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

The Virtual World - This project is exceptionally good - on border of broken good. Usually you want Network node in every base. One good fix is to make Hologram Theatres cheaper a bit and cost less maintenance. They are 60/3 now and every base needs them. Hologram theatre is basically Recreation Commons + 50% psych. Psych is great for big bases.

Guys, what's the big obsession with The Virtual World? It is one of these free facility unremarkable projects. They all should be proportional to facility cost/main. That's all.

[Nexii]

VW is quite strong because Holo Theatres are pricy for what they do. Not so much the construction cost but the maintenance. When you push back boreholes, 3E maint is kind of steep. The only real way to pay for them is +2 ECON SE, so you're kind of forced into that

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Hmm. Then this is Hologram theater problem. Should it be cheaper or lower maintenance?
It's a combination of Recreation commons (40/1) and +50% psych. The latter means that if you additionally spend 4 energy to quell 2 drones it makes it 3. Not bad but this usually comes later in the game. So in practice it quells 2-3-4 drones depending on game stage. I'd say it should be about 50% more expensive than Recreation commons. Or maybe it is designed to be later stage second tier facility when it is more useful.
Should I change it to 60/2. Will it be more fair?

If you browse through other psych improvement facilities you'll see they all are quite expensive especially in maintenance.
Hologram theatre (60/3)
Tree farm (120/3)
Hybrid forest (240/4)
Research hospital (120/3)
Nanohospital (240/4)

[lolada]

I think Virtual World is my favorite special project - its top 3 in the game. Basically the way i play the game is to spam colony pods up to a number and then grow cities. You can't grow cities past 3-4 really unless you have Hologram Theater. Then it takes a lot of time to build Network Node as well. If you can kill 2 birds with 1 stone its awesome. Especially due to how much maintenance it costs.

These are must have facilities in every base in standard game so its huge time saver. Hologram Theater is also kind of Prereq to get better Special Projects - higher pop = more minerals and SP. With low pop its not safe to build special projects. Lately i changed playstyle a bit so i don't focus research nearly as much - but its still standard good play.

So as to how to change it - well maintenance to 2. Remember we want to reduce tech pace a bit - i think its good to have some maintenance and 1 is too little for what it does. Virtual World certainly increases tech pace - thats part of why it is good.
Maybe it can be 1 row cheaper it makes some sense - its indirect nerf to project.

Other facilities (except recreation commons) are indeed expensive but they give other benefits.
- Research Hospital is important its +50% labs as NN.. + psych + 1 drone quell.. quite awesome for those 6-7 pop cities. It stops Prometheus Virus - thats is actually important as I place cities 4 tiles apart and virus has that range.

- Tree Farm, Hybrid have huge other benefits..
- Nanohospital is way overpriced imo i almost never build it.

There's no much point to science too much in late midgame.. Quantum smth +50% science is also kind of useless in SP unless you race to the max. At some point you get so much science that its better to build other things like army or probes, secret projects and what not.