...Specifically, the Big Three: volatile motes, exotic gasses, and rare crystals.
@grekulf recently revealed on stream that the non-housing districts on a ringworld will consume rare resources for upkeep in 2.3, including a mind-boggling 10(!) volatile motes per month for the agricultural segment (hopefully a bug in that particular build). I believe that this is the first time that districts--as opposed to buildings--have had a rare resource upkeep requirement, and there is justifiable speculation that the upcoming patch will apply the same to districts in an ecumenopolis.
If rare resources are going to be consumed at even higher rates going forward, then something needs to be done about the production of these critical elements. As it stands in the current version, I find balancing the production/consumption of rare resources in the mid-to-late game (with the attendant refinery spam) to be a tedious chore.
The problem isn't the mineral cost of synthesis; if anything, that could be increased in order to make natural deposits actually rewarding. It's the cost in building slots that creates a real bottleneck. Every refinery and mine produces a base 2 resources per month; with production bonuses, that can usually be boosted to 3. At best, this offsets the upkeep of two top-tier buildings, assuming I can get costs down to 80% with the Prosperity tradition and Functional Architecture civic.
Even worse, refineries and mines only give one pop job while occupying a building slot that took five pops to unlock. As a result, I can't concentrate rare resource production on dedicated refinery worlds because this would cause unemployment issues. Instead, I have to spread production across all my planets, offsetting the employment gap with top-tier research labs, commercial zones, alloy foundries, and so on (which in turn require rare resources to function). This reduces planet specialization.
I can think of several approaches to make this balancing act less tiresome. The most straightforward would be late game techs that unlock upgrades for refineries, allowing greater throughput (and employment) per building slot. Another solution might be ramping up the extraction of rare resources from deposits over time by making them function like the dimensional portal or subterranean civilization: They provide a number of miner jobs based on total population and don't require dedicated building slots to function. This would also have the salutary effect of making these natural deposits feel special; right now, they offer a small savings in minerals and nothing else.
I don't know. Maybe this isn't a big issue for other players. What do you think?
@grekulf recently revealed on stream that the non-housing districts on a ringworld will consume rare resources for upkeep in 2.3, including a mind-boggling 10(!) volatile motes per month for the agricultural segment (hopefully a bug in that particular build). I believe that this is the first time that districts--as opposed to buildings--have had a rare resource upkeep requirement, and there is justifiable speculation that the upcoming patch will apply the same to districts in an ecumenopolis.
If rare resources are going to be consumed at even higher rates going forward, then something needs to be done about the production of these critical elements. As it stands in the current version, I find balancing the production/consumption of rare resources in the mid-to-late game (with the attendant refinery spam) to be a tedious chore.
The problem isn't the mineral cost of synthesis; if anything, that could be increased in order to make natural deposits actually rewarding. It's the cost in building slots that creates a real bottleneck. Every refinery and mine produces a base 2 resources per month; with production bonuses, that can usually be boosted to 3. At best, this offsets the upkeep of two top-tier buildings, assuming I can get costs down to 80% with the Prosperity tradition and Functional Architecture civic.
Even worse, refineries and mines only give one pop job while occupying a building slot that took five pops to unlock. As a result, I can't concentrate rare resource production on dedicated refinery worlds because this would cause unemployment issues. Instead, I have to spread production across all my planets, offsetting the employment gap with top-tier research labs, commercial zones, alloy foundries, and so on (which in turn require rare resources to function). This reduces planet specialization.
I can think of several approaches to make this balancing act less tiresome. The most straightforward would be late game techs that unlock upgrades for refineries, allowing greater throughput (and employment) per building slot. Another solution might be ramping up the extraction of rare resources from deposits over time by making them function like the dimensional portal or subterranean civilization: They provide a number of miner jobs based on total population and don't require dedicated building slots to function. This would also have the salutary effect of making these natural deposits feel special; right now, they offer a small savings in minerals and nothing else.
I don't know. Maybe this isn't a big issue for other players. What do you think?
one of the very few times I use claim war goal. Usually I go for vassalization.
