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Well... If it would in my reach, I clearly would attempt game balance through different means - my solutions so far are just focussing on limitation of resources because that's the easiest way to tweak the game progression without actually 'coding' - so tweaking values is what's left as an option. And since the game presents only so few varibles as clear numeric values, I have to work with what's at hand. :)

Tweaking the code on base of its 'logic' would be possible I guess (what I've seen it's basically all simple scripting - you just have to 'understand' the creators logic once to find hooks into the source) but I guess that's more than I can bring to the table time-wise right now. And since the game's overall state is... well... barebones and the possibility for (a better) Strive 2 on the horizon (let's just hope it doesn't take years ^^) I just don't consider more enthusiastic modding attempts reasonable with the existing base-infrastructure in mind.

Also; there IS someone working on bigger expansions - and since the way the game handles modding will always prevent the compatibility of bigger projects, I won't interfere in this regard. It's simpler to create just a more 'balanced' game environment, so everyone can easily adapt it for their own game and even apply the balancing to modded instances with just minor adjustments.

Right now I'm more at the theorycrafting stage - how to increase the 'challenge' and get rid of factors that encourage 'exploitative' playstyles - this automatically involves that the solution can't be more 'grindy' than the original state. That's why I'm looking for the energy calculations - since right now, you can circumvent most resource-shortening measures by just using your daily energy to the max. That I have to prevent - and if I manage to shorten the possible daily actions exploration-wise, it's way easier to balance the values of items, slaves & jobs around it. And a side-effect is, that there is practically no POSSIBILITY to 'grind' around this balance without energy - so that would be out of the calculation...

Thx for the hint - guess I was thinking about another game - seems the (base)energy consumption is handled rather poorly in Strive. If the calculation for it is done for every possible 'encounter' in an individual instance, I guess I have to look a bit deeper so I don't miss single instances. I somehow thought I saw the calculation somewhere done on a more basic layer - but now that I think of it, that could have been another games script... ^^

And yeah... Notepad++ is replacing the base M$ solution for quite some years on my machines - and I don't even consider myself as IT specialist. :D