from a discussion in the discord: we looked at profits from Light Industry and Heavy Industry, and the numbers on these two seem really off.
Light Industry makes way too little. on my 100% Hazard, 146% Accessibility, and 10 Stability world, my LI exports goods for about 18k credits. it's upkeep is 12k, and that's with a 50% reduction from a Beta Core! it's *slightly* profitable with all those 4 positive modifiers, but only just. on most worlds, or even on that world but without AI Core, it's not even close to being worth building.
meanwhile, Heavy Industry seems overpowered. with all the same modifiers as above, as well as a Corrupted Nanoforge, mine makes 65k from exports, and costs 18k upkeep. if it was just a for-profit industry, i'd say these numbers would be fine. a bit too high maybe, especially considering how common Corrupted Nanoforges are, and that it would be even more profitable with a Pristine Nanoforge. but not by much.
but it's not just another for-profit industry, it has the absolutely crucial function of allowing ship production for both my faction's fleets, and custom orders. even if it would make zero income of any kind, every player should still build at least one HI at some point, that's how important it is. combined with big export profits, it's a bit crazy how valuable this industry is.
the main issue here, i think, is that LI produces only 2 goods that both have rather low total sector profits, whereas HI produces 4 goods that have pretty good sector profits.
so one easy way to at least make the numbers a bit more reasonable would be to simply remove the Supplies production capabilities from HI, and add them to LI instead. for Heavy Machinery and Armaments, and obviously Ship Hulls, it wouldn't make much sense for them to not be produced by HI, conceptually. but for Supplies, which are also needed by many civilian industries, and even basic infrastructure, i think LI would actually fit pretty well.
with my numbers from above, moving Supplies from HI to LI, LI would have an export of 36k (assuming it would produce the same amount as a HI with CN), and HI 47k. HI would still be significantly better, but not quite as good anymore, and LI would make a decent profit.
i know the colony numbers in general will still probably get a lot of adjustments in future patches, and my suggested change might not be enough to balance out these two industries, but it would be a very simple change that reduces the main issue of why their export numbers are so skewed.