we NEEEED a requisition center rework! of all the colony buildings in the mod, its probably the weakest- for a number of reasons!
1: even in vanilla alone (bar ind evo and its dependencies), which is an unrealistic scenario because theres not a soul who plays starsector with only ind evo, very high importance arms dealers are programmed to sell up to 1000 different types fighters, weapons, and ships. this means every single weapon, ship, and fighter for sale - these are commonly encountered, especially with the right contacts (but even without them you can find these guys via bar event aswell), and dont take up a colony slot, and can get you anything a requisition center can get you
2: if you add in what may be considered as "QOL mods" like stellar networks, with that mod you can check if any market anywhere is selling a weapon you want. this is also easier and less costly than devoting a colony building slot / initial build cost to a requisition center. even if you dont explicitly balance around other mods, the average starsector player who uses ind evo probably uses other mods aswell so its worth taking into account what options theyll have at their disposal
3: if you consider Nex, prism freeport also has a good chance of selling whatever a requisition would sell. and NOBOODY plays with ind evo but not nex.
ergo, i think that, contrary to the boasting and prideful loading tip proclaiming that "no structure is useless", the requisition center is USELESS!
but i wouldnt dare complain without offering a solution:
1: each faction has a unique set of weapons (or even weapon singular) that are ONLY sold at the requisition center. theres a handful of clear candidates in vanilla starsector even - req center with good syndrian diktat relations could sell the kinetic blaster and gigacannon, for example, and perhaps cooperative relations with tri tach could sell a tiny handful of omega weapons (this isnt too far fetched considering nexerelins remnant contact lets you get this weapons aswell and lorewise some descriptions mention tri tach testing them so theyd have them). other vanilla factions might need weapons made for em - however, once this trend is set i am CERTAIN modders would leap upon the bandwagon with GUSTO if it is configurable via config file which factions are tied to whiich weapons, and would make weapons (or perhaps other items - like BPs and special hullmods, or perhaps Immersive Skills -esque skill BPs) only attainable via the requisitions center.
this would ensure the requisitions center finally fills a proper, wholly unique niche
2: weapons sold by the requisiton center are unique in that they cost 1 OP less to mount or smth else that makes em stand out compared to their normally acquired version
this might be hard or impossible from a coding perspective cause how would you keep track of a stack of vulcan cannons that has generic 4 op vulcans and special req center 3 op vulcans? but if its achieved itd work out of the box for all weapons from all mods (bar any 0OP weapons) and wouldnt need any unique content added for it to be useful for each faction, vanilla or modded.
3: just make the req center sell up to 1000 weapons and fighters, like the arms dealer does, and at a much smaller rep threshold, such as 10 or maybe 5, perhaps even 0, and without markup (or minor markup)
this still arguably doesnt make the req center do anything different than high end market / arms dealer /stel net browse does, but it just makes it the most convenient and efficient choice out of those options for attaining weapons and fighter LPCs- as it should since its a colony building! this is also probably the easiest solution IMHO - and also works out of the box with every mod faction.