The relative value of the advanced buildings is uneven. There needs to be some re-balancing/systemic reworks to bring these more in line.
- The Offworld Market is insanely valuable, and in many cases determines who wins and who loses. In general, a player with 2 will beat a player with 1, who will in turn beat a player with none. This includes the influence of sabotage and other black market attacks, which in general end up costing the attacker more in the long run (both in raw cost and opportunity to use the market elsewhere) in order to keep the market offline than the owner can make in the interim by stockpiling and selling on planet (although multiple players ganging up can overcome this).
- The Optimization Center and Patent Lab are about evenly matched, with the patent lab having the issue that its value is higher the earlier it is built and it eventually becomes a worthless claim (More comments on the patent system in a different post). Both are highly valuable, with some factions obviously preferring/requiring the patent lab, and in fact having 1 of each is generally helpful. There is rarely a detriment to having them.
- The Hacker Array is in general not good compared to the other buildings. The market swings it can generate are not generally worth enough to justify having it over other buildings. It's also generally hard to make the most of it, due to the delay and the limited information on opponents operations.
- The Pleasure Dome is junk. Unless you get one from an auction (and even then you shouldn't bid too high for it), there is never a good reason to build this over one of the others. The money it generates is paltry compared to the direct income or indirect benefits of any of the other buildings.