Resource Balance: Yes, this is a problem and I've done some things to try to correct it.
1) Organics:
Make every life-support module cost 500 organics. It represents some sort of a 'recycling' system after all. There has to be an initial investment and then with this cost it will have a continuing maintenance cost representing replenishment of your life support.
Make the emergency resupply components use LARGE amounts of all three resources. Especially organics. These represent a store of everything you need to operate your starship, remember.
Increase the organics cost of many facilities to represent the feeding of workers who build them. Certain facilities, like Urban Pacification Center, ought to have very high organics costs to represent their actual construction. If you think it's a "vacation" center then it needs lots of food and other goodies for the vacationers. If you think it's a "psychological control center" then it needs lot of organics to make drugs to practice mind-control.
The Resupply Depot also ought to have elevated organics cost.
2) Radioactives:
Make shields use at least 1 radioactive per shield point, possibly even more. Shield regenerators should use TEN radioactives per point of regen ability. Also make many weapons use some radioactives.
This gives warships a substantially higher cost per kt than transports, as it should be.
Make the Quantum Reactor require at least 1000 radioactives. It's a REACTOR, right?
Add more radioactives to the costs of resupply depots and ship yards. Building and fueling star ships should be very energy intensive.
3) Additional tweaks: Make each sort of resource extraction facility require a substantial amount of it's production resource. This is already done with mineral extraction, but organics and radioactives ought to cost 500-1000 of their respective resources to "prime the pump" as it were. Organics to fertilize the initial growing beds/fields, radioactives to build the extractor/reactor that refines things.
These changes have helped to make resource requirements more balanced in the games that I play. Things are still heavily tilted in favor of minerals, but not nearly so much as in the default game where you practically don't need organics if you're not an organic tech race.
[This message has been edited by Baron Munchausen (edited 03 June 2001).]
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