Are you sure that economy is OP or is this inflation of higher marks extractors? And potentially nebula buildings additions?
Anyone playing without instantly unlocking Mk II/III extractors from the start?
For quite some time I played without doing that and my economy was usually strained - add fortresses to that and energy was not so well also. So I also started to unlock Mk II+ extractors - they seem almost mandatory now. I'm not sure if that would mean that economy per se is OP - maybe ability to upgrade it is to good?
I NEVER start the game without instantly unlocking both sets of MKIII Harvesters. It's just too good of a benefit to pass up.
I'm told that the reason the Harvesters were buffed was because "nobody liked waiting around for their entire army to rebuild between battles". I obviously wasn't there for that discussion, or I would have raised quite a stink. It's not like AI War doesn't make you arbitrarily "wait around" in many other aspects of the game. The ten minute ARS Hacking cost, the Superterminal wait, even Champion Scenarios are basically just sitting there, throwing up a shield every once in awhile, and letting your little allies win a war of attrition. I mean Jesus, would anyone even play AI War games if they were afraid of waiting for things?
In pretty much every other strategy game I've played, when you lose your entire army, you lose the game; so I don't know why AI War wants to coddle you in this way, and not punish you for losing your entire force and having to wait around and rebuild it. The waiting
is the punishment - it's the time that you're vulnerable that the AI can attack.
Perhaps that's the problem with the game: That the AI attacks on set intervals, instead of waiting until you're the weakest to strike. That would certainly be a lot more interesting and realistic in my mind.
Honest to god, I'm a very tactical player. I like using each one of my ships to maximum efficiency, microing the hurt ones away, and repairing them between battles etc., but AI War has put me into a position where I'm actually wasting more resources by healing my guys between fights, than by constantly blobbing them between planets, taking losses on purpose just so I can have a way to use my resources! What kind of backwards game design punishes the player for being as efficient as possible? If I don't constantly send my guys into battle, I'm just sitting at 999,999 resources, wasting them instead of using them.
In my opinion, we should just take MKII and III Harvesters out of the game. Doing so would fix so many issues by default:
1. Instantly Econ Stations are mega-buffed.
2. Now the player has to choose between the more vulnerable Econ Stations, and the more practical other 3.
3. Instantly the game becomes much harder.
4. Instantly the player has to be more careful with his fleet, and not just throw them away willy nilly between battles.
5. Counters immediately become more important (they are superfluous now) in an effort not to waste your fleet.
6. Player has to expand more for resources.
It doesn't fix all of the game's issues by a long-shot, but it certainly helps.
In my opinion if we removed MKII/III Harvesters, added the bonus ship omission file, and added the Super Guardian AI Plot, most of the game's issues major issues would be dealt with.
Between the Harvester nerf and (individually) removing the useless bonus ships, tactical considerations would become much more important. For players who wanted that extra strategic and tactical challenge, Super Guardians would be like icing on the cake.
Anything else (such as hull types and armor reworks) could be dealt with at Keith's leisure.