Drengin are hard

I was running some numbers on the Drengin Slave Pit and its upgrades compared to power plants and it is sad. The slave pit gives the same adjacency bonuses as the power plants but doesn't receive any bonuses or have any bonus of its own. This makes it extremely weak. The fact that it also benefits research is nice, but because the Drengin still get the Cooperation Center line of improvements, it actually helps science much more than manufacturing. I like the idea of the Slave Pits, but it needs a straight-up buff. The slave pits should be worse then the power plants with only a couple of adjacent buildings, but should become more effective as the bonuses build up.

After looking at the numbers I believe the adjacency bonuses for the slave put line should be as follows:

Slave Pit: +6

Slave Mill: +9

Slave Factory: +12

Those numbers might look a little gaudy at first, but at every level, they need 3-4 adjacent manufacturing buildings to surpass the power plant/factory equivalent, even factoring in that Drengin manufacturing buildings are better than standard factories.

This is the first I realized Slave pits, etc. gave adjacency bonuses to research chambers (etc.) in addition to work camps (etc.). But is it really all that good? If you use both around a slave pit you lose some adjacency bonuses. You are also giving up specialization, so does that mean Drengin are better suited for generalized planets?

What? Bonuses are 10/15/20/30/40% for Work camps, etc., and 25/30/40/55/75% for Terran factories. Sure they cost less, but the savings is offset in a few turns. In exchange the slave camps give a military adjacency bonus, which means boosts to planetary defense (woo hoo). If I could understand how Dregnin manufacturing buildings are better than factories, I might get somewhere.

Yeah, my bad. I was looking at the Iridium factories which I didn't realize are different from the Terran ones. In fact, it seems like the Terrans are crazy OP. Both the Iridium and Alterians have factories that go 10/15/20/25/30.

No wonder I do much better with Terrans than the others. Think this is a bug of incorrect stats, or is this intended?

I remember a thread from way back talking about how farms are better than factories for increasing manufacturing (though there is a cross-over point in the very late game). The devs mentioned intending to make farms less OP, I wonder if the Terran numbers are a way for the devs to test that, and if so when was that change made. Eh, just conjecture.

I just checked the Altarian and Iridium factories and they are the same as the Terran ones. Only the Drengin ones are weak.

I was looking at old saves. Apparently there was a patch in which the standard manufacturing buildings were buffed, but the Drengin ones weren't. In the first version of beta, the Drengin manufacturing buildings were the best, now they're the worst. Seems like an oversight to me.

Very interesting, so maybe the better versions are more in line with what the devs want? I hope so.