I just wanted to pop in, say thank you for this mod. I just finished my first playthrough with this mod on 0.97 and actually made use of colonies and research and wanted to leave a little bit of feedback.
The databanks seem way overvalued. Yes I realize they are quite hard to find, but when I did find them I got like 4 or 5 at a time X 500k each that was a couple million credits each time. Maybe spread them a little thinner (more frequent but less per find) and possibly drop their value as well?
The specific databanks were also very useless. By the time I had found them I'd already researched my way through them. The only ones I used were the ones that were required to start the research like orbital skunkworks and by the time I got access to it I had long been done building my fleet and it was just to boost my faction's ship quality.
Fracking is either too good or the alternatives don't offer enough. The only way I would use any of the alternatives is if I already had a colony with fracking.
I'm still not entirely sure what maglev was doing for my colonies? From the description it seemed like it reduced demand of everything by 1 unit but it didn't feel like it really had any impact.
Similarly terminus? I upgraded all my waystations but didn't really feel a difference.
All in all I'm not sure if its just the way I play with colonies or the way colonies work it just generally feels like colonies are a end game credit dump that converts into eventually a giant monthly income and with all the databanks and money I put into it I basically didn't need the money to begin with. It takes a LONG time to research all the techs, build the buildings, for it to get to net positive on what I spent on the colony. Might be just how colonies are in general and nothing to do with this mod, but adding more cost and requirements to it doesn't really help in that regard.
Finally a question... is there any point of building multiple research stations? I feel like if you should only have one you might as well put it on Galatia academy and just have building it.
And a couple of suggestions: add incremental upgrades to the tech tree. Add bonuses to existing industries instead of adding new ones. eg better mining tech reduces the upkeep of the mining industry by 20%, medical improvements increases growth rate by some small amount (less than hazard pay). Stuff that would affect all your colonies when they are researched without building anything new but give minor improvements that turn the tech tree into ... more of a tech tree and add a consistent payoff without really affecting the end game colony too much.
Some other building suggestions: weapon/ship/blueprint blackmarket as an alternative to weapon/ship building. more costly but doesn't require you to have the blueprints but can get you harder to obtain stuff for 3x (rare weapons/ships that are only sold to factions you are commissioned with +90), 5-10x (unique stuff like XIV legion), 100x the value (cryoblasters?)
Cloning vats: new industry that you can alternate between +population growth to make your colony grow faster or produce harvested organs.
Secure vault: new building. reduces credit loss if colony is taken over, 0 storage cost for stored items even when owned by another faction.
Mercantile group: new building. Allows higher level of import/exports from the colony, also spawns relief/rebellion supression fleets earlier for your own factions or friendly factions.
Foreign embassy: new building. allows you to set faction diplomatic goals. reduces chances of random war declaration, improves/reduces faction standing for a few points every month toward your goals.
