Arcology dockservices & devices should be better

[Aury]

It is a military installation (in part), and the capitol of the commonwealth. I would think they would at least be at the level of a militia fortress, if not a CSC.

Not to mention they sell the same sorts of low-level things you'd expect to see in eridani

[Song]

I normally don't even bother looking at the exchange there....the stuff is pretty forgettable.

EDIT: Speaking of which.....the arcology has *no* defenses. And immediately past St.Ks, all commonwealth stations have massive TEV9 arrays.... Even a few fighters would be good (not many people attack St.Ks, but it's amazingly easy to kill)

[Aury]

Well, who would attack st.k's in not-TX2? (In TX2 there's a whole ares invasion fleet literally next door, and yes, they do attack. And yes, there will be lots of defenses, and lots of attackers.)

[Prophet]

The arcology relies on the defenders of it's satellite stations. On a few occassions I've lured ships into the arcology but it takes a long time for them to be destroyed as the defenders try to avoid collateral damage. 2 raid platforms at the same time plus their respective fleets took about 5 minutes and a couple of the slums/habitats were destroyed in the process.

The main arcology's selection of goods is mostly useless, The main economy of the system is focused in the satellite stations. Rasiermesser, makayev and bushido dealers are fairly common as are the generic armor and weapons dealers. My current and last playthroughs spawned 5 manufacturing plants providing ample trade opportunities. By that point of the game, I'm usually looking for the 2nd tier weapon enhancers and at least a 100 mW reactor, neither of which are available. The military aspect of the arcology seems somewhat out of place. I feel it's more of an enlistment office perhaps with a small reserve training facility rather than a full blown fortress.

It would be the ideal place for a fortress, near the outbound gate, to offer some military equipment and maybe the first opportunity to change ships! Of course that could drastically reduce the difficulty curve in the following systems, which may or may not be a bad thing.

[Atarlost]

Militia bases don't upgrade reactors. That's the main thing that needs to be added, since St. K is where you really want to do your reactor upgrade to 100 or 150. Right now you can't do the 150, but could do the 100 by backtracking to Rigel, which now has two drydocks.

Right now the 150NX is a pointless reactor. It's perfectly sized for Sung and Dwarg space, but can't be reliably found until after the SN2500 becomes common loot.

As for the shopping, the satellite stores aren't at all reliable. Generic weapon/armor dealers don't have all that much that's good for the next stage of gameplay. Rasiermesser shops are wasted. The only good weapons they have use ammo, and ammo tends to be in short supply to the point that most players dare not waste slots, or in the Wolfen dare not waste the cargo space. But that's another rant. That leaves Bushido and Makayev dealers, but the Bushido stuff is usually too expensive. Those in the know usually won't buy particle weapons at this stage because of Dwarg, and the Starcannon draws too much power for an unenhanced Nova 100 unless you run shieldless and can give you trouble even on an enhanced Nova 100. The Thermocannon has even worse ammo problems than the Akan, and the x-ray never shows up. That pretty much leaves Makayev as the only dealer you can count on.

What might make things interesting would be if St. K stocked the stuff nobody else ever has enough of: enhancers. You can never get enough of any enhancer besides longzhu spheres to max out anything. Just 5 of each would make a huge difference and make it worth not using optimizer roms on everything.