The exclusives were how I used to justify a PS, but now that they are coming to PC after a year it makes that decision harder to justify. Particularly because they usually look better on PC and mods can be used, so as long as I can stand to wait I usually have a better experience on PC.
I’m not sure about sites, but many of the old GB people have independent podcasts and streams. Check out Nextlander or The Jeff Gerstmann show. Some of their stuff goes up on YouTube as well.
YouTube is also a good place to find reviews, if you can find a few people who generally like the same stuff you do.
I’m making some assumptions, but I think as you increase the general quality level of your production lines that it becomes easier (not easy), to get the higher quality items. Maybe I missed it, but I don’t think they stated what a higher quality intermediate product does (like a higher quality iron plate). My assumption is that anything produced with it has a boost to it’s quality.
If this is true, then by thoughtfully focusing on where quality is being produced and how high quality items are being used that it should be possible to get reasonable chances at “epic” items.
My point about scaling was that once you have a large supply of epic mining drills, assemblers, labs, etc that it will be possible to achieve the same SPM with fewer machines operating, and therefore could build a higher SPM factory to achieve the same UPS as without quality. You’re probably right that it will take awhile to get sufficient number of epic items to do this, but playtime for this game have never been small numbers.
I think it adds another thing to do as you progress to the end game and finish the tech tree. The infinite research was good, but this will allow people to scale their megabases even further before the UPS drop chokes it.
They address that at then end of the post. After all, the same developer is working on both projects.
Basic point is thwt they are targeting different audiences, but there will also be engine improvements. I’m hope that means SE just gets better because of these changes.