Power Plant Balance?

I'd say that the map characteristics should have the greatest say over which power system is best. 

Presently almost every map has high ground so Solar tends to be the better option, but if high ground was more variable in its presence, or features like mountains came into play that offered higher yield wind locations, the choice of solar or wind might not be so easy. 

The lack of mixed power adjacency bonus also forces you to go balls deep on either wind or solar, but rarely a combination.

In addition, if how far away a power structure was to your HQ had a slight downward effect on how much energy arrived that might work in favour of wind because the very high ground does tend to be on the map peripheries. 

I think they're pretty fairly balanced. 

The thing is that while solar power is good at night time you're still buying power, so when the prices are high you're losing a lot of profit unless you have that power capacity patent. The effect of this seems to be that yes, if the prices are skyrocketing you're better off with solar but if prices aren't going too high you're better off with wind. So you go solar if you're looking to profit from energy and wind if you're just looking to sustain your base.

Geothermal is a different beast and hard to equate to solar or wind. While it's very strong this can be a crutch as well. They're so expensive to build and amazing mutiny/dynamite targets. Just last game I played an 8 player free for all, I rushed Geothermal a player right next to me did the same but as soon as his building finished I TNT'd it. He was set back so far that he couldn't profit from energy while I kept raking in cash to continue my strangle on his power using mutiny while protecting my own Geothermal with Goon Squad. 

Which cluster type would make the most sense, 2 Solar / 1 Wind or 2 Wind / 1 Solar?

That could add another building called the Subsystem that is required for transmitting power over areas larger 10-15 Hexes without loss.

I sacrifice one of my initial claims for a Geothermal vent, even if I dont have the money to build a geothermal plant yet.

I agree. I think Solar is much more likely to be the target of Black Market actions because if you hit it around dawn you severely hurt the owner if prices are high... where as turbines are less attractive. Plus I've seen a lot of market manipulation to drive down the cost of power during the day and increase it at night just to hurt Solar...

Geo is even more riskier as it's a big BM target AND you need to get a limited spot AND there is a big investment upfront...

Soren boosted the effectiveness of wind turbines by 20% for the next update. It may not be that when you guys get it, but he is trying to address the problem.

Thanks!

-Scott-

Thanks for the update Scott, 20% might be more than enough we'll see how it plays. Another pretty large advantage of solar that I don't see mentioned is that you can put them anywhere. They allow you tons of flexibility whereas wind turbines are much harder to repurpose. 

I'm sad to hear this. I thought it was fine as it was. Just as Velusion said the BM vulenerability is a real factor. GT is most efficient but most vulenerable, Solar is more vulenerable than wind due to the rythm of day. Wind is the least efficient but also least vulenerable power supply.

There is also the dust storm + solar flare that works in favor of the wind power, since it does not get negatively effected by the solar flare, whilst solar gets negatively affected by the dust storm.

I agree with the points everyone has raised, and I'm happy to hear there is a 20% buff being applied. 20% still makes wind power the weakest of all three. But it at least makes it viable. The argument of "it sucks, so it won't get targeted by black market" doesn't make sense, as that's a backwards way of looking at things. If that's the case, why not make wind power even worse than it is?!? Then it'd get targeted even less often! What a great buff that would be to wind power players! lol

Right now (before the increase in wind power) I find that solar is by far the best power plant to build and won't bother with anything else. Its cheapest to build and scales way better than any of the others. Geothermal requires too much of an investment initially, and is too inviting for sabotage. Any decent players will target the geothermal relentlessly, so if there's few on the map, you have to commit to spending a lot of money on goon squads.

So, with respect to scaling. There a few ways with power to actually do it.

1. Adjacency. Pretty self-explanatory. Not applicable to geothermal. Doable with wind, but hard to find proper clusters. Easy with solar. The caveat is that you do not want to be stuck with tiles after you drive the price of power to 1. So, building them next to your colony isn't a bad thing since you can scrap them and put down more useful buildings. Works well for solar since the gains for buidling them on high ground aren't too much, maybe 20%. A triad of solar will give you ~6 power. Wind is ~4 but its hard to find 3 high winds in a triangle next to your base. Build them elsewhere and the claims are lost for the most part, unless power is not 0

2. Patents - Double power for building next to colony. This goes with the building next to the colony. Cheap, overlooked patent, and you'll know when someone is going to try to grab it since they build next to a geothermal. Now your Solar triad is 12 power.

3. Engineering Upgrades. 2 cheap quick upgrades for another 50% gains. 18 power for that solar triad, little investment. Suddenly any time power spikes, you throw down a few solar panels, and make serious cash. With a few upgrades, the patent and solar panels, its easy to hit 50+power production excess.

I won a 4v4 team game in about 5 minutes shortly after hitting level 2. Power spiked very early due to a natural shortage and a typical early game metagame power issues. Hit 400. I happened to be researching the power patent, so I threw down 5 solar panels next to my colony. 10k income/second and couldnt spend the cash fast enough buying people out.

The important point is that when power spikes, you want to be able to jump on it and produce ridiculous amounts of power as fast as possible so you gain the largest share before driving the price into the ground before returning to your normal production. The same goes for every resource, but noone is stockpiling power and the output can dwarf any other resource.

None of the others power sources are practical for the profiting because you miss out on the scaling and are hindered by location.

I'm convinced.