AI War:Resource Efficiency
What Do I Do About Reduced Harvester Efficiency?
A: If you're playing a single player game, there's nothing to be done. You can take as many harvester points and planets as you want, and you'll continue to grow your income, but you'll have diminishing returns as you do so simply because you are getting so spread out and having so many metal/crystal producers in general.
If you are playing multiplayer, it's important to remember that the efficiency reduction is per-player. So, to optimize your team's income, you'll want to make sure that every player has a fairly even number of producers past a certain point. If one player hogs all the resources, not only will that hamper their teammates, it will also make the net efficiency lower.
How Is The Reduction In Efficiency Calculated?
The reduction is calculated based on how many producers you have overall for the given resource. Having many metal producers will NOT affect your crystal production, and vice-versa. The efficiency reduction is also a global effect, not something limited to just your most recent producers (though those are the ones that show the reduction). The efficiency calculation is NOT affected by the distance between harvester points or their planets, or any other factors beyond simply how many of them you have.
If you lose a "full efficiency" producer, don't worry about it -- the net effect to your economy is the same as if you had lost the worst of your "low efficiency" producers. Whenever a new producer is added or lost, the efficiency balance is affected throughout your economy.
