Even with forest spam though, i always end up with WAY more nutrients than i can use except for a new base that doesnt have tree farms yet. Given that every forest will eventually end up producing 3 nutrients, thats more than enough nutrients to hit the pop cap as every citizen eats 2. Then you have enough left over for a couple of bore holes for minerals/energy.
The problem with borehole spamming is the slope requirements and the clean mineral limits, assuming you can get rid of the eco-damage. Im not sure how eco damage works apart from the clean minerals limit...some stuff like pholus mutagen says that it reduces the effects of industry, is that referring to the clean minerals limit or something else? I read on another site that every borehole built increases the risk of global warming, but hybrid forests are supposed to eliminate all eco damage from terraforming, so...
I modded the game so that you get +2 CM limit from fungal pops and for every environmental building, and even then its quite easy to cause eco damage once you start factoring in gene jack factories, quantum converters, etc. And im not even trying to mass spam boreholes and crawlers (i typically use crawlers for energy due to the CM limit).
The only times i use condensers is when i manage to grab weather paradigm and i have a nutrient bonus square, in order to get +7 nutrients early on. But once you grab the cloning vats, nutrients and growth mods become useless. Theres hydrophonic satellites too if you really need extra nutrients.
Echelon mirrors are really uninteresting because they dont give much of a boost and takes too much effort. Coastal HQ, spam supply foils, easy +4 energy per shelf tile. In order to beat that with echelon mirrors you need to :
-Find a large part of land
-Raise it without screwing up your coastal improvements
-Spend god knows how many turns building echelon mirrors and solar collectors
-Keep it safe from mind worms, etc which is much harder on land.
vs Tidal harness spam near your HQ.
I find coastal bases are much easier because kelp farms are amazing. Up to +4 food with just one cheap facility, way before you can get hybrid farms and they are invaluable before you get cloning vats. They also give you up to 3 minerals per turn with all the proper bonuses.
But once you get established bases going with hybrid forests, theres very little reason to touch anything except boreholes for the advanced terraforming options. A rainy square is only going to produce 3 nutrients a turn with a farm...and typically only one energy with a solar collector because the map genreator doesnt like high elevations. Meanwhile a hybrid forest produces 3-2-3? That is so much better than a farm, and forests are so easy to plant.
On a related note, what is drill to aquifer supposed to do? It doesnt seem to create a proper river, just a single river tile. Whats the use of that for something that takes a lot of turns to terraform? Instead of wasting my time doing that i could just spam tidal harnesses and supply foils instead for +4 energy per turn...or +5 with the merchant exchange.