Your learned wisdom - do you need more than 2 power relays and 2 resistance comms rooms?

[Riversub]

Are 2 resistance comms and 2 power relay rooms enough to complete the game? Assuming you fill both with the max number of engineers.

[Fringehunter7719]

The short answer is 2 of each fully upgraded is more than enough.

There are 16 regions in the game and you start with 3 resistance comms capacity. So the absolute maximum you need to upgrade (and honestly, you can certainly clear the game sooner) is 13 additional capacity. Each res comms gives 1 capacity and the upgrade another 1. Staffing the first slot in a res comms gives +2 and the second slot an additional +4, for a total of 8 for an upgraded res comms (vs. 3 for a basic res comms). So 2 gives you more capacity than you ever need, usually you can grab 1 or 2 scanning events for comm capacity through your campaign, getting 2 of those means you will be at 16 with 1 basic and 1 upgraded comm facility.

Power wise you start at 6/12 and the mandatory buildings will be:-
GTS 3
AWC 3
Proving Ground 3
Upgraded Psi Lab 10
Upgraded Res Comms 7
Basic Res Comms 3
Upgraded Shadow Chamber 9

Optionally you have:-
Upgraded Lab 6 (recommended mid-late game after all priority buildings)
Upgraded Workshop 3 (expensive and almost never worth building, recommended to skip)
Upgraded Def Matrix 4 (vaguely fun for 1-2 missions, but mainly useless)

For a total power requirement of 51, minus the 6 you start with, leaving 45. However if you place buildings on shielded power coils they cost nothing, so assuming you put a psi lab on one and either res comms or shadow chamber on the other (as you should) you can knock that down to 28. If you also skip workshop (which again, you should) that becomes 25, or 23 if it's the shadow chamber on the second coil.

Basic power relays give +3 power, the first upgrade gives +2 further power and each staff placed in a power relay gives +5 power, for 15 for each upgraded and staffed power relay, or 8 for a basic staffed power relay. There is also a second (and badly overpriced) upgrade for power relays to make them elerium conduits which grants +6 power and doesn't need an engineer (but you should only use this if you're badly short of engineers late game).

You can also get +3 power per scan event that pops up through your campaign and potentially +5 from a continent bonus.

Thus it's always enough to build just 1 upgraded power relay and 1 basic power relay, which will need to be staffed end game, if you build optimally, and if not then 2 upgraded power relays with staff will always be enough. You can chop and change with scanning/continent bonuses and even elerium conduit upgrades if you like (although that last will be more expensive in cash, elerium and maintenance but will save on engineers).

You can get through most of the game with just 2 basic and unstaffed power relays until late game the second res comms, res comms upgrade and potentially def matrix increases your power needs dramatically.

[NostromoXP]

I'm on my second run at the moment and in both of those I have managed to contact every region and I needed 16 contacts to do so. With two fully upgraded and staffed Resistance Comms you have a total of 20 contacts available so you have more than enough to spare.

As for power if you build 2 relays on tiles with exposed power coils you can get around 68 total power to have all facilities built and upgraded you need 61 power. I was reading another thread today which suggested that it is better to build the PSI chamber on one of the coils as a fully upgraded PSI chamber needs 10 power but building a power relay on a coil only gives and extra 7 power. So to wrap up you need two power relays one of which should be on an exposed power coil and the other can be where it fits best with your other facilities.

[Aranador]

Play carefully, ad you can get away with one fully upgraded power relay, if you also get an event that adds some power to your base. But 2 power generators will certainly be enough, and you wont even have to upgrade one all the way if money is tight (or upgrade it but dont staff it if engineers are lacking)