Mega dome worse than 2 mediums

[EEE_boy]

The choice of dome size really depends on resouce availability and density. If starting location has poor resouce, small dome is a temporary solution before readily moving to a better location for bigger sized dome for permanent population center.

If the initial location has ideal resource mix, med sized dome may be an attractive transition for a farming dome to take advantage of the water conservation spire. Jumping directly to Mega dome may stretch resouces too tight in high difficulty high disaster map.

 

[NilsFabian]

I never use the mega domes. Also only used the terraforming dome once to get the steam achievement.
When Building my colony I always try to wait until I get the medium dome and then Medium it is. You have enough space in it.
Only Thing needed but thats simple is that i have to construct the Kids dome where all my Kids are concentrated to go to School and University. All other domes have the No Kids policy

 

[Ma®tin]

The larger domes have more use than the medium ones due to certain spires having global benefits. Why build two Medium Domes and two separate Network Nodes when you can build one Mega Dome with one Network Node spire?

Also multiple small domes are not that hard to micromanage; just make sure to have one central resource hub for 3-4 small domes and locate your drone hub there. From a drone distance perspective a central hub should in fact be able to more easily serve multiple small domes than one big dome, as the overall service diameter will be shorter.

Indeed in many ways having multiple small domes is easier to micromanage as it allows you to fine-tune your filtering better - e.g. you can simply have a farm dome prefer botanists and not worry that you'll have engineers mixed in with the farms (if you do then there's probably a colony-wide specialist imbalance to begin with).

It really comes down to an individual playstyle and sponsor. With Europe I hardly ever build much of a research. I also got a taste for the one cargo ship one passenger ship playstyle, which changes the development of colony quite drastically.

The point is, different people will find better use for different types of domes so one cannot say that any f them are worthless. Also if one does not want/need mega dome, there is no need to research it. In terms of balance it seems quite fine.

 

[EEE_boy]

Small domes have more use in hard difficulty levels while resouces are constrained at all time. med dome is also good before the colony can afford large dome, sometimes even an early med dome (usually food dome) can put a lot of strain on the colony resouces around sol50-sol100.

In hard difficulty, with all other search priorities, large dome has to be delayed for quite some time. But eventually, a large dome (food or science) plus a couple of small domes (industry, edu, senior, mining) should be the typical late game setup of a self-sustainable community.

Lower difficulty level, it doesn’t matter to optimize everything, just buy rocket loads of everything from Earth, then it comes down to individual playstyle.

 

[Zinegata]

It really comes down to an individual playstyle and sponsor. With Europe I hardly ever build much of a research. I also got a taste for the one cargo ship one passenger ship playstyle, which changes the development of colony quite drastically.

The point is, different people will find better use for different types of domes so one cannot say that any f them are worthless. Also if one does not want/need mega dome, there is no need to research it. In terms of balance it seems quite fine.

That’s the “game is not tight enough to invalidate any dome type” I’ve been saying. I’m just pointing out what the Domes are actually best at based on the math.