I'm never disingenuous (unless I'm obviously joking), but it's always possible that I'm misinformed, or maybe not quite as efficient as I thought I was. Here's the situation: My EE level is 24, so I'm not sure whether that counts as "decently high level" in your book, but I'm guessing it's high compared to the "mid-range" standard that we're aiming for here. With one account, 5 StM bases, and some low tech colo boosters and stuff I can do 7 or 8 T9 EE bases. You say each one on Loads of Mets should average 10 mil mets per day, and I'll take your word on that (I've never done the math). When you run all three upgrades at the same time, it uses 667 mets per tick and 333 silicon per tick (can't remember the nukes, but probably 111 or so if the pattern holds). How often is there a "tick" in the building queue? Is it every 5 seconds? If so, that's on the order of 11.5 million mets per day per StM base (times 5 for a typical account setup) if you want to get your bases upgraded within a month. Don't forget the nukes and silicon either. Generally I've had event messages about silicon needed, and if I get that increased, then the base starts to run out of mets, nukes, etc. Not every EE base can be on "Loads" of all three of those commods. In addition, there's the issue of transporting them all. I'm weak in the MFM department, so this problem may affect me more than some other players, but like I said, I'm definitely far ahead of what most would probably consider the "average" midrange player. I don't want to give the impression that I'm whining about myself here. I can "make do" with all of my old ada gear and what not if it takes my bases a bit longer to upgrade, so this system isn't hurting me much. I'm saying that the true "mid-range" players who don't have good pre-made gear and a full account of developed alts that this system was designed to help aren't going to have a chance.

It sounds like you are pretty strapped for ExE/MFM support. Although with the stuff you have I think it should be possible to support 5 StM XYZ builds as long as you are careful about where you deploy your ExE kits. On the other hand, you could use T16 or T18 Ada kits instead. I dropped some T16 Ada kits this uni and noticed that the resource requirement for Anda Z gear is MUCH less than it is for Anni Z gear. Going off the stats Markoz posted (since I don't have any Anda Z gear built yet) it looks like they are pretty competitive too.

I may be a bit uniformed here, but it's my understanding that the T20 junkyard kits come with Andaman gear installed, which takes us back to the problem of mid-range players being absolutely defenseless at reset time if some big bully team decides they're in the way. I understand that vanilla Achilles gear builds fast. Annihilator gear isn't even that bad if you make it in the middle of the uni and have the required building materials.

Well, it's a touchy balance to strike. You don't want insta-geared kits to be too strong since they could tip the balance unfairly in a galaxy assault. Traders did some unintentional stress testing of the new kits this reset and our conclusion at least was that they are pretty handy without being overpowered. I do not personally think it's a big problem if lower level players get pushed around by the big guys on the first few days of a new uni. If anything, some degree of that is necessary in order to preserve the competitiveness of the land grab. The way I see it, less accomplished players can do their best impression of Lando Calrissian and carve out a relatively profitable but unassuming area of space for themselves, lay low for a while, and hopefully get some upgraded gear installed over time.

I could be misinformed / misunderstanding, but I thought one of the big points of this major rebalance was so that the newer players didn't have to get that stuff built on some big team proddy base and buy / build sing spheres to store it all over a uni reset. I may be remembering incorrectly, but I thought the original plan was to have sticky vanilla gear BPs built into the stations and require only common commods. That would be a much bigger help to the newbies than the current system.

To me it seems like you are describing exactly what we got with XYZ gear bps.

In reading the forum it was my understanding that the X Y Z base gear would be converted to normal gear. Except for 2 lasers that would be renamed something else. Also Superlaser BP still require Laser X to build them, so how can we build them if there no Laser X BP anymore?

Announcements
Base Rebalance Update
2014·09·22 by yclepticon
Since we are repurposing XYZ gear as disposable, we need to do something about currently-existing XYZ gear. When universe reset is taking place, we will go through and replace existing XYZ gear by the plain versions. But before you cry “nerf!” let me share with you some new stats.

Would a pre rebalance base with ablatives survive better than a post rebalance base without ablatives?

Hello guys As many of you know, we intended to replace X, Y and Z versions of basegear with regular base gear. Sadly, this will not be happening. The items can be disposed of by selling them to AI bases

because the "wise ones" say XZY gear was worthless anyway, so is of no loss to people who spent time building it.

because the "wise ones" say XZY gear was worthless anyway, so is of no loss to people who spent time building it.

QUESTION

How am I to build XYZ gear on bases that Lack Materials?

In the past I could just deploy the gear from my storage, or if I have to build them I would just build them in my proddy.

Now I have to build them insitu and that involves hauling large to huge amounts of material around. That takes EXTRA HOURS of game time and/or ties up scares shipping resources.

BTW pity the players not building in high warp 3 How the hell do you get the materials you need when all you have is a BIT of this and a BUNCH of that

This is just crazy!

We dont need this!

Make the XYZ gear transportabel again