[Balance Idea]: upgrading T2 to T3 Mex should cost less...

[SteseDav]

Intended Change

Apologies if this has previously been discussed here or elsewhere.

Currently, it costs 4600 mass to build a T3 Mex on a deposit. It also costs 4600 mass to upgrade from T2 to T3. This means that instead of upgrading, if you reclaim the T2 Mex, and then build a T3 Mex in place, you make a saving on the amount of mass due to the reclaim value of the T2 Mex

cost to upgrade

cost to build

(ignore the mass incoming rate, I had the 'nothing but time' mod applied to take the screenshots)

I propose the cost to upgrade be lower than the cost to build new.. the specific value would need to consider the amount of reclaim you'd nominally get from reclaiming a T2 Mex (I don't know where to find this value)

Reasoning

It seems to me that since you have a proportion of mass already present in the T2 Mex, you'd only be adding and reconfiguring to this mass while doing an upgrade... it seems to make sense to cost less total mass to upgrade (convert and upgrade) than to build new.

Expected behavior

Upgrading a T2 Mex to T3 should cost a similar amount to the net mass used in reclaiming a T2 Mex and building a new T3.

[ostrovaya]

The whole "destroy the t2 mex and build on top of its reclaim as much as possible while stalling mass as little as possible" strategy (?, micro, tactic, whatever) was one of the more puzzling things to learn about the game. I doubt I'm alone. I also doubt anyone would ever learn this unless they study it or are told this information because it isn't necessarily intuitive.

I would welcome this. I'm also not on the balance team :)

I'm laughing a little at the "Yield 900, -54" values.

@SteseDav can you make a thread in the Discord's #balance-suggestions so more folks can give feedback?