Jigs are overpowered and I don't think this is an unpopular opinion. Jig Cost: 3000 Metal produced: 36 /s Energy produced: 9000 /s Metal storage: 10,000 Energy storage: 50,000 Advanced Metal Extractor Cost: 1700 Metal produced: 19 /s Already we can see that on the basis of metal production alone the Jig is more cost effective than advanced metal extractor. Advanced Energy Plant Cost: 2000 Energy produced: 3750 /s On top of that we have it being far more efficient than the advanced energy plant. To make its value even better it acts as half a metal storage and half an energy storage. The biggest insult to injury though is the fact they explode. Intended to limit construction of jigs, as they can chain react, a simple click and drag prevents that from ever happening. Any semi-competent player will never build jigs close enough to chain react. The fact jigs explode then works in the defender's favor, because attackers lose their avengers in raiding, or have to dedicate expensive and slow artemis to raiding, this also requires a lot of micro. Conclusion If an attentive player gets a strong foothold on gas it is impossible to win it back. the eco jigs provide on top of the difficulty of raiding them means gas is not only the most efficient eco, but the easiest to defend. Edit: N30n's equilibrium mod changes jigs in a somewhat satisfactory way. Any discussion of potential balance fixes could use this as an example.
To clarify: Equilibrium makes the jig no longer produce energy. I like this change, and having played a fair few games with it, I think it works well because it means that you can't instantly start building jigs after rushing orbital because there is a large energy cost to get them up with any reasonable speed (i.e. 2+ orbital fabbers). It also forces you to build energy back on the ground when you're expanding your production and you can't just rely on the 9k energy per jig.
They should have a draw on energy, and also the metal + energy storage should be killed, just to make the storage buildings somewhat relevant on multi-planet systems a̶g̶a̶i̶n̶ .
Give em lower income and lower storage potential, they're going to need to produce some eco imo, Gas would become useless, having no energy income to me although solar panels, doesn't seem good for the orbital warfare, jigs help speed it up substantially. I edited jigs in a mod I made to 3000 energy 22 mex, half the storage. This worked a bit better, gas wasn't overly snowball all though it was if uncontested. I think eco balanced well and floating wasn't so prominent until gas was won, eco was easily used. Nuking jigs could be a counter, it used to be. I think complete orbital rework is the way to go current, although it works to some extent its bad, is there point in trying to grow a dead seed? If you cant counter gas effectively without control on it I think the arsenal is at fault. Once over I had a 12 hour game, all we had were orbital fabbers lasers and nukes, Locking a planet down was OP, the arsenal was the problem.
I'm not an expert here. But if you make them 3 times cheaper and let them yield 3 times less they will be much harder to defend. It will also take orbital constructors longer to build them as they have a slow move speed each time they go to the next construction site. I can also agree that they perhaps should not have energy production (since you have indeed solar arrays) and there storage capability also seems less logical.
