I freeze up on decisions like this. I've gone with the production/growth option so far, but the +% to shields and beam damage looks tempting. My concern is the latter might be over powered and make battles unfun--I've already found 8 He3 sources so that would be +80% beam damage and shields vs +2 prod per pop and +80% growth. Has anyone tried it? If so, what was your experience?
Hmm, just realize once I put outposts on those 8 sources (got lucky I guess, and still have several more gas giants to scan) and get Interstellar Geology, that will be 160% beam damage and shields, which would surely make battles too easy. +4 prod per pop and +100% growth is nice, but not game-breaking, so I'll go that route.
It's something the AI could take away from you so there is recourse for them to reverse your OP status.
Well, part of it is probably also my play style and the fact that I'm on normal difficulty. My resources are currently at 16/6/3/5 on turn 129 with another 5 He3 on the way, but I both got lucky (started next to a wormhole that dumped me the in middle of a bunch of systems with gas giants) and had a lot of opportunity costs pumping culture to get Interstellar Geology and building lots of outpost ships--I have no military to speak of and am way behind in military tech, but on normal the AI hasn't taken advantage of that. I'm guessing on higher difficulty the AI won't let me get away with that. And I can always just keep going the +pop and production route instead of +beam and shields, or not grab up every He3 source in the galaxy if it makes me too strong. The nice thing about single player games is you can always handicap yourself if you find something out of balance for you. Though of course if it they add multiplayer I would have been overrun in the first 40 turns while I was obsessively focused on resources. So I think it's fine as is.
