Double fuel cost throws off the balance

I have the same problem but i still don't understand the game entirely.
But i could run a decent company before and with these prices i'm rolling into debt big time.
What also wonders me is that the ai rarely have fuel plants and they do just fine how they do that?!

The AI also is regularly two upgrades behind the player, keep that in mind. Its low debt comes at a price.

The new shipping cost does fix the problem of cross-map mines. And incidentally, it makes teleportation suddenly worthwhile to pick up in Campaign.

I guess I should clarify that I have no experience with either of the scenarios you mentioned as I've never played campaign and never play with AI's. Regarding multiplayer and 1v1 though the fuel cost boost makes power and fuel more important/valuable than other resources.

I don't agree that cross-map mines are a problem. Building a mine across the map is already a liability in that you spend fuel cost, the time to construct way far away from your base, and the time to ship everything all the way to your HQ. If you change production of the tile it's a slow process and it's very susceptible to dynamite attack. Teleportation is viable enough just to eliminate the lag you get associated with shipping your resources across the map.

I can only imagine how dominant power robot looks in this patch.

As an aside I'd love your debt number to be featured more prominently again so you don't suddenly look up and see you're in $200k of debt. The number being in dark red and marginalized below the cash number is something I'd love to see changed. Some method of highlighting it to make it easier to notice. A box around it? Make it bold? Move it to the same horizontal axis as the cash? I'll take anything!

Um... I haven't played a single game post patch, nor properly watched em - mostly lurking here and there while missing all the important parts. So this is more of a question than anything else. Is there any reason to build farms at lvl 2-3? Sounds like reactors will have the edge every time. 

Still definitely viable and in some cases preferred. Because robots now have double fuel costs as well (and they use power as fuel) the power now spikes way higher earlier and necessitates a geo or some other power source at HQ 2. If there are multiple robots with distant claims then look out. Since farms use little power it helps so your debt doesn't spiral and gives you the possibility of going with 2 geos early to make money early on.

Reactors are good but because of the high cost of power they require they're not necessarily better than farms. On the other hand farms are harder to build since they cost glass/more expensive and slow down your expansion whereas reactors don't.

Some of that balance will depend on the map and how far away people have to take claims for the basic necessities.

Also worth noting that teleportation has gotten a lot more valuable now as a result.

Well it depends a lot on the other players and how they play, along with your own strategy. If they're robotic, making fuel is kinda worthless. If they have only 1 distant building and it's for aluminium (such as if they're scientific) the difference on fuel price is not enough to change the outcome. If your ahead in upgrades then food still has the higher base price, so if you want to grab funds early it's still better. If you have a lot of frieghters in the air but are looking for rapid expansion, say your in a 1 vs 1 and want to get a level 4 offworld, food is still better because the fuel produced will be drained by your frieghters, meaning your trading the cash your building could produce for not gaining debt, which is the opposite of how you want things to go. However anything mroe than 3 non-robotic players will likely cause a huge rise in fuel, making reactors beat farms. Then again, farms are sometimes a lot cheaper being 10 glass vs 40 steel...

Also what blackmagic said. Ontop of that patent water engine is now also something I consider, being fairly cheap and sometimes your burning more in fuel than you are in power, inturn reduces profitability of chem labs,  making it potentially better than cold fusion.

Everything is a bit funky with too many robots. On a map infested with robots you might as well skip water based resources at first and go with glass instead. Perhaps, my question should've been which deficit is more painful nowadays - the power or the fuel? If I take your word for debt diving becoming more frequent, I have to assume that fuel deficit is the culprit? Or is it really both? Getting geos up and running at lvl 2 is not very easy or maybe even realistic. It's not uncommon to claim the geos at lvl 2 but delay the construction up until lvl 3 or even 4. I have no idea how it all balances itself out. I guess I should play and find out myself, yes?

Claim at level 2, build at level 4, is a mistake unless it was an auction.

What could rebalance the game would be to make fuel and o2 reactors more effective.
I need 3 alligned fuel reactors to gain even a little fuel and o2 when i have 2 or maybe 3 short supply lines.

Perhaps when the reactors produce more then the players who are producing it selling it and keeping the price more balanced.
Along with all the ther resources fuel and o2 seems to be the slowest to increase in your stockpile.

I must be blind, because I didn't see your post. Or maybe it's my subconscious mind leads me to ignore you because you stopped making those tutorials...

Yeah, that makes sense. Quite unfortunate though, if after all the talks about negligible effects of the debt all this change has achieved was um... more exploiting of the above debt. 

I suppose all power/shipping patents got buffed. Maybe that was the goal...

Not necessarily, if geos are sparse you do want to claim them early. But that's not the point. The point is that actual construction of the plants at lvl 2 is not very feasible. Especially if you are not expansive. 75% worth of main upgrade material is just too much more often than not. 

After playing with it a little more my only real concern is the debt diving it causes for new players. It's easier to pick them off cheaply now.Taking the 2 adjacent low aluminum near your base vs the high aluminum halfway across the map is a hard concept to get a new player to understand.

I don't have as much of an issue with it anymore. It's just an adjustment.

Yeah but right now you almost HAVE to build everything close to your base because of this.
The penalty was already high for having a large transport due to time loss lower fuel cost and higher and higher chance the black market items will interfere with the cargo ships.

This also makes the starter location maybe TO important.

I think that if they don't redo this they should also make fuel/o2 planets more effective to keep the price balanced.

Better players have higher ROI and can race debt better, so they can ship farther. It's possible you're not expanding fast enough.

If you're doing Soren-like things, you may want to look for Teleportation/Water Engine/Perpetual Motion. That generally isn't viable against good players unless you are outracing them with a good found. But it's perfectly legitimate to solidify an existing lead.

I'm with you magic I think the game is less balanced now and I also think the higher shipping cost heavily favors the in my opinion the already overpowered scientist because they don't need to find high tiles they can just plop down in a bunch of resources. Half vulnerable to attacks quicker patons and no need to do a primary and secondary resource. Plus mentally it's just a lot harder to attack a scientist because you know you're only getting bald effect.

Another reason this favors the scientist is because they don't have to ship resources out to their claims only back to the colony and if you're planting say steel mills or glass furnaces away from you're base rather than mines you have to ship resources much less frequently and definitely spent much less fuel dollar for dollar shipping resources.

showcasemike, I think you should take a closer look at your glass furnaces.

Actually, it's the opposite. Your statement is correct only with regards to water based resources. But non scientist will only have them away from their HQ's late in the game when fuel costs are manageable. If ever. So water-based resources are irrelevant. With anything else non scientists only ship primary resources, while scientists are those who might ship secondary. And with glass/chems/electronics they still need to ship oxygen/fuel/aluminum-silicon-carbon to remote plants. Meaning, with glass in particular, it's often better to ship silicon back to your base. This allows saving fuel (thus minimizing debt), saving TONS of time and overall having more flexibility. Glass tends to crash fast and silicon is quite valuable resource as is. Scientist are already the underdogs when it comes to power play, not collecting silicon just makes it worse.

From what I've seen so far in current tournament, debt diving is actually less frequent than it used to be. So Blackmagic is probably right. It's very possible that more experienced players adjusted pretty well. And fast. Basically it all goes back to debt managing skills.