Do harvester upgrades now dominate econ command stations?

[Martyn van Buren]

I'm not too good on the numbers side, but I'm starting to gather from forum posts that not many people are still unlocking econ command stations before higher-mark harvesters.  Is that true?  I'm still doing econ stations, but that's because I hadn't noticed til just now the quirk of logic that makes them more effective with very high numbers of planets as well as very low (you can use upgraded harvesters on your homeworlds but not command stations). 

So most importantly, am I right?  Are careful players still finding a reason to unlock econ stations before harvesters?

Anyway, if I'm right to suspect that the harvester upgrade route has become pretty much optimal, might it be worth changing things so that econ command stations can get back their early-game advantage?  I feel like "Option A will help you get started while Option B will help more later in the game" makes more sense as a tradeoff than "Option A will help you get started and in the late game while Option B will be better from your 4th to 12th econ planet."  This would be pretty easy --- we could put the same limit on harvesters, replacing normal ones on homeworlds with "Human Homeworld Harvesters" and forbidding the construction of other kinds.  These would probably want to be as or more effective than normal Mk III harvesters to prevent people complaining about not being able to replace them but of course we could reduce the number of resource points to keep starting income in the right range.

[keith.lamothe]

People said during the harvester buffs, and it turns out they were right, that the harvesters (even after their relatively quick re-nerf) were still basically always better than the econs now.  So the first thing to try is probably nerfing the harvesters a bit more so that there's more of a mathematical window where econs are better.

Alternatively econs could be given another advantage, but I'm not sure what that would be.

[Draco18s]

Alternatively econs could be given another advantage, but I'm not sure what that would be.

Do they already generate power?  If not, that's a possibility.
Also, I'm of the opinion that harvesters should be a better option than command stations, but that command stations are an axillary source to be used deep in the player-core worlds (tending towards the mid and late game, whereas harvesters are more early game).

[keith.lamothe]

Also, I'm of the opinion that harvesters should be a better option than command stations, but that command stations are an axillary source to be used deep in the player-core worlds (tending towards the mid and late game, whereas harvesters are more early game).

Right, and since there's a cap on the number of econ stations of a particular mark you can place and no cap on the number of harvesters, it's just a matter of how many harvester spots you have to have before the harvester bonus overcomes the finite econ station bonus.

What I'd like to see, and what I think several people have expressed wanting to see, is a window (say, between 3 and 8 planets or whatever) where econ station upgrades are better unless you happen to pick very resource-spot-heavy planets.

[Draco18s]

Fair.  It's just not how I roll.

[Wanderer]

There's two key points of difference between harvester and econ station upgrades.

Even if everything went dead even by direct balancing of number of harvester points in each system, harvesters will own the early game because of the first defense/strike economy before you get to your second planet.

Secondly, a Logistics/Military/Anti-Warp station can protect upgraded harvesters.  There's no logistic harvesters to protect upgraded econ stations.

They are two completely different functions.  Personally, I wouldn't mind seeing Econ stations removed entirely instead of trying to balance this in multiple branches.

[Hearteater]

Eco Stations could also improve all Harvesters by +X.  So say X is the Mark of the Econ Station in metal and crystal per second.  If I have 6 Econ IIs, all my metal and crystal harvesters are at +12m/c.  They become better right along with the Harvesters.  You just need to give up Military/Log CS to get the better economy.  Running some quick numbers, fully maxed with Mark II and III Econ CS, you get 2x6+3x6=30 extra metal and crystal per harvester.  Mark III Harvesters produce 55, so you'd be getting 85m/c per node.

[Wingflier]

As has been said, Harvesters give a large economic upgrade that doesn't sacrifice the safety of your planets.  Economic Orbitals either directly slow down your fleet (and speed up theirs) or reduce the effectiveness of your defenses significantly and can't see invis. Knowledge-wise the difference between the two upgrades is almost insignificant. Unless Econ Stations were REALLY powerful, I don't think it's worth the risk.

edit:  Part of the problem is finding a place to put them all.  Especially in multiplayer games with several people, finding 6 "safe" planets to put them without treading on your allies' territory (who also need resources after all!) isn't going to work out so well.  I say cut the cap in half, and increase the effectiveness of each individual Eco Station by 3.

[Varone]

As has been said, Harvesters give a large economic upgrade that doesn't sacrifice the safety of your planets.  Economic Orbitals either directly slow down your fleet (and speed up theirs) or reduce the effectiveness of your defenses significantly and can't see invis. Knowledge-wise the difference between the two upgrades is almost insignificant. Unless Econ Stations were REALLY powerful, I don't think it's worth the risk.

edit:  Part of the problem is finding a place to put them all.  Especially in multiplayer games with several people, finding 6 "safe" planets to put them without treading on your allies' territory (who also need resources after all!) isn't going to work out so well.  I say cut the cap in half, and increase the effectiveness of each individual Eco Station by 3.

Would having the econ stations have in built engineer ability to all surrounding structures and the ability to rebuild in a certain radius make you think about using a couple? The Mk III could have planet wide ability to repair/construct/rebuild comparable to a number of engineers and rebuilders. Goes along the economic feel...

[Eternaly_Lost]

The issue with Eco Command Stations is that they do nothing until you take your first planet. Unlock Harvesters and you instantly(or close enough) get more resources to use.  When you are against a clock and need resources now to hold off the AI waves until you are ready to take your first planet, it does not matter if Eco Command give 2 or 200,000 resources per second. Until you can plant one, you can't use those resources to your own use. Outside of the Command Stations, every other upgrade can more or less be put to use right from the very first minute of the game if you unlock it. You can build more ships, you can build more shields, you can build more turrets.

If you want to make Eco Command stations a viable pick, they need to improve the Home Command station. I can't really think of much else you can do to balance something you can get the bonus of right now minute 0 when you need it, and the one you looking at at least 15 minutes if you are rushing to use. I don't think I have taken my first world faster then 10 minutes, and even that is pushing it.

I agree with Wander that you might just want to remove Eco Stations completely, or else they are going to need something major done to them to make them worth basically slowing down your whole game waiting for that first planet.

@Varone: Well that is a good idea, that does not really feel so much of a Eco thing to me. Still that would be rather nice if they supplied basically planet wide repair to ships in their planets. Have them all be planet wide and scale the repair up with mk, so that MK3 might be at the rate of say a MK1 Eng and scale down the rest from there.

[_K_]

There is a number of problems with eco stations:

• Many resource spots on HWs make harvesters good in early-game
• Their limit means they dont scale well into late-game
• They have very useful alternatives

The last point i think is cool and probably should remain. Having multiple interesting and viable options everywhere is kinda the point of like every update.

The other points need to be countered by serious advantages, and the current resource income balance between harvesters and stations is not enough. The economy system has been buffed enough already, so I'm strongly against just buffing the eco stations.

The harvesters need nerfs. But how about also some creativity?

For example, instead of the shield tech, get 2 branches of "extensions" for harvesters - combat and resource.
Resource extensions are put on the basic harvesters like shields, but only give resource bonuses, like the current MKII and MKIII do (still nerfed though)

And the other branch would be combat add-on, with the same module system as riot starships or spire stuff. Add some slots to mount shields, guns, maybe low-tech HBC's and so on. Basically, this would turn harvesters into human guard posts of sorts.

For the automation, have a togglable setting "always use highers mark resource harvesters/combat harvesters/dont autobuild harvester add-ons".

[Winge]

The Econ Station upgrade is very nice once you take a few planets, but that's about it.  It's no good before the first capture, and gets dwarfed late game.

A few possible ideas:
1.  The Econ station upgrade affects all Econ stations--like how the harvester upgrade affects all harvesters.  Not very original, but should not be overly difficult to balance.
2.  Increased energy generation.  Having Mark III energy generation increased to ~20k-40k range would give them a little bit more of an edge, although not so much now that energy reactors are gone.
3.  Built-in repair drones that work like miniature engineers.  A good boost for dock worlds, and keeps you from having to keep a 'repair engy' on every world.  Higher marks have more/faster engineers.

I also liked the idea of the "increased resource generation aura", but I am not going to take credit for it

[Wingflier]

OMG I just had a brilliant idea.

One of the BIGGEST problems you run into when you have so many resources is hitting the cap.

What if Economic Orbitals increased your resource cap?  That would be a big incentive to get them.

What about 100k for MK1s, 250k for MK2s, and 500k for MK3s or something similar.  Even without buffing anything else this would make them worth building in my opinion.

[TechSY730]

Just my $0.02.

I like how econ stations have many things in common with the military and logistics stations.
They all have the same caps across marks.
They all have the same knowledge costs across marks.
They all have increasing effects as they go up in mark.
They all have their effects restricted to at most per planet (aka, none of the basic 3 command stations of any mark can have an influence outside of their planet).

As such, I don't really want these points to change, the symmetry is just too nice in my eyes.
Thus, I like some of the simpler proposals, like nerfing the higher mark harvesters a bit more (to give a wider range of planet counts where econ stations are optimal).

I also like that idea of giving it some kind of "assist gun". Perhaps it could increase in range and/or rate as the mark of the econ station goes up.

I am also in favor in boosting its energy output some. Right now, the energy output is sort of ignorable, even at Mk. III.

[LaughingThesaurus]

I just had a thought, reading all of this (unless I accidentally saw someone else say it, and forgot). What if Economic Command Stations instead just gave harvesters higher efficiency, and had those repair drones as well. It functions like the basic economic upgrades do, in command station form.
It wouldn't even have to be a 'buffs harvesters resources' thing. It could just project shields on all of them automatically (No exo-shield needed) or provide some other overall buff to all of the harvesters.