2 days after SotS2 came out I'd come to the conclusion that stimulus was simply not working or worth it (or a little of both) and started simply setting it to 0 right at turn 1. Then a few patches ago, I learned that they'd implemented mining stations and that the game would spawn civilian owned mining stations if you had points into "mining" stimulus and the right technology. I kinda shrugged my shoulders and kept setting stimulus to 0, honestly mining stations didn't seem worth the credits i was saving by ignoring stimulus. This patch they've added in something interesting with stimulus though, if i understand correctly, colonization stimulus now creates "independant" colonies. At a first glance, you might wonder well why should i spend money on independent colonies not under my control? But the true value of these colonies is you don't pay "development" costs. Assuming you've taken all the good "under 300" worlds with your colony ships, the only free worlds are the ones you've left uncolonized because of the expensive colony development costs associated with worlds in the 400+ hazard range. If this stimulus works like I understand it, what you get is worlds colonized on their own that you can simply leave alone until they're grown-up (or at leasted terraformed down under 200 hazard). Since only the bad worlds are left open for colonization, this would means you could save a lot of money, get worlds willing to join you later, and not have to pay for them or even send ships to colonize them.
So my question is, has anyone played around with this new feature enough to give us a feel of its working and if colony stimulus is worth it now?
So my question is, has anyone played around with this new feature enough to give us a feel of its working and if colony stimulus is worth it now?