Putting a Ruined Megastructure in every Precursor System

[drawar]

You can achieve balance without making megastructures more easier and common.

 

[Don_Quigleone]

I wasn't talking about getting it early; I was talking about getting it normally. Megaengineering is 20 times more likely to show up as a tech option if you own a megastructure. Making it so all precursors give a megastructure would essentially turn this from a conditional to a guarantee, at least for the player, which I don't think is a good idea.

Interesting, that's when I'm crutching on the Cybrex Relic to generate a fleet's worth of alloys in one click.

You're probably better at this game than me.

The relic is actually better than the "free" ring world. However, the action costs 10,000 minerals and 3000 unity. So you're trading~4375 pop months (miners plus bureaucrats plus consumer goods) for ~3333 pop months (alloys plus minerals).
If you wanted to generate that many alloys, it would be strictly better to just build lots of alloy jobs and not use the relic at all. If you're floating minerals you're playing inefficiently

The vultaum or zroni relic give combat bonuses that are probably worth more if you already have a big fleet.

 

[SirBlackAxe]

Sentry Array is actually a pretty good fit for the Yuht - their story involves them searching the galaxy for another sapient species.

I don't think Mega Art is a good fit for the Baol, because the final system was the home of the genocidal Grunar who wiped them out.

Note that two of these systems have bugs making them weaker, if that effects your balance calculations - Vultaum should have +10 minerals and Irass should have +10 energy and +10 minerals.

Maybe you could make precursor megas so heavily damaged that they don't count towards the x20 weight for mega-engineering and repair to stage 1 instead of 4?

 

[Lorenerd11]

Zroni: for machines and non-psi ascension regular empires it's the worst precursor, so they get one of the best megas for a machine empire. Furthermore, their home system had no habitable planets, so it doesn't lose out by finishing the Dyson Sphere.

Baol: quite decent IMHO, having a bonus Gaia World every 10 years is not bad at all for many empires, so I assigned them a decent B-list mega, but there's no compelling reason behind it.

I feel like these need a better rationalization.

 

[TSBasilisk]

The final system of the Baol storyline isn't the Baol homeworld; it's Grunur Prime, the homeworld of the species which wiped the Baol out. If you were going to go for a Megastructure, they'd probably have the Strategic Command Center due to being a psychotic warrior race.