For example, last nights game with yesterday's 1.8. My Death Furnace starts with +50% RP bonus and thx to my buildings around it is +9 which means +90% more to my base line RP total for a total of +140% RP. This and my Gaia Vortex and other goodies are on my HW which had almost +250% RP and that would be increased as I progressed. This seemed to me to make it worthwhile to mine nearby asteroids since I'd really be getting almost 3.5 RP/mine and I had no worries near my HW about them getting destroyed soon.
Tonight, with the new DLC (I also think some changes to 1.8 patch came out) being an Elite Founder everything is set to DL and install instantly, I started a new game and decided to try my Godlike strategies in a Huge galaxy and let all 12 stock races play along with my custom race. Hmmm... now my Death Furnace only provides +33% RP and adjacency bonuses don't help RP but only help manufacturing by +5% per!
Similarly, the Thulium Data Network, provides a fixed +8 research rather than a +50% bonus. The Durantium refinery provides +8 manufacturing rather than +4 RP.
Was all this documented somewhere?
The net effect of this is to somewhat nerf the human player's plans to get really strong due to RP. It also will make it more difficult for me to rather easily win playing Godlike by military means.
The fact that one cannot quickly achieve combined RP bonuses in excess of +200% nerfs asteroid mining somewhat. I felt asteroid mines were costly at 500/per prior to this RP nerf and now they really are costly. They should probably cost 250 or 300 per.
.. neilkaz ..