I've found out that it's extremely easy to "circumvent" the 15 energy/tick maximum with relative ease using a simple trick:

E6N18 is proof of this.

You can do this anywhere you want, and as quickly as you want. This practically makes production of XGH2O useless (unless you want to do it even more quickly). 

The problem is mostly, there is no "upper upgrade" limit in the lower RCL levels. Below RCL 8 you can drop in as much energy as you want. Currently a mechanic with inactive terminals can be abused to send in energy to a non-RCL 6 room. This can be abused to boost ones RCL and snowball out of control. 

I think we should get an open discussion going for properly fighting this imbalance. The 15 energy limit was put in place to stop the effect of "high GCL" players getting away with dumping massive amounts of energy in controllers, spiralling out of control. 

I've personally thought of the following things we can do to at least make it not this easy as is:

• Make inactive terminals not receive energy
• Add some form of upper limit of upgrade speed on controllers below level 8  ( value of XGH2O will increase )
• Remove limit all together and let energy balance itself out ( XGH2O would still be valuable)

I hope we can have a nice and open discussion about this topic, do you feel the same? Or do you think it's perfectly fine? Let me know what you guys think!

You'd only have to boost with XGH2O for 300k energy and you can do it the same way using storage.

I'd be a tad salty if this were to change because I asked about this clarification to begin with and the devs were well aware of the mechanic and adjusted it in a way they thought was more fair. So I've written code and made infrastructure to take advantage of this. It should also be noted that the discussion is being spurred but the player I passed up partly due to this mechanic Although I do think his heart is in the right place.

It doesn't really result in snowballing. The intervals between my GCLs is taking longer and longer. It is just going a faster than it would otherwise. If your intent is to make it so that all players level up at the same pace, that ends up being a pretty boring game. It then becomes more about how long you've played rather than how clever you are with your code.

XGH2O is still valuable, it still gives the bonus that it would otherwise. This is just something on top of that.

It also doesn't just benefit high GCL players. This strategy becomes viable as soon as you start seeing longer intervals in between your GCLs. I was doing something like this as early as GCL8. 

This was not my intention. It was more to make it more fair between higher level rooms, and give more opportunity to optimize.

Since this tactic is seems here to stay, anyone can do it and the 15 energy limit seems off compared to this. Just "dedicate" one of your rooms to this tactic and you're golden for a long time when you got excess energy to lose.

The upkeep is definitely high ( E6N18  burns through 90 energy/tick terminal upkeep alone), there will always be a certain limit. You can only do ~1400 actions/tick if you optimized it to smithereens.

For player growth: the 300 CPU limit will obviously limit your actions.

Personal gains with the new tactic:

1 creep doing 15 (or 30 boosted) energy/tick or 1 creep doing 40 (or 80 boosted).

Both take 0.2 CPU to complete. Effectively I got a gain of 266% in CPU to reserve ratio. Well worth it, but feels broken

Keep in mind, once power processing matters, this might no longer be the best use of energy. But this could still be one way to spend energy strategically.

If this tactic is allowed to stand then we should also remove the 15e/t cap at RCL8.

I think nerfing this is an objectively bad idea. Skorp put it really well, the way it is now there is pretty much no incentive to be efficient with your energy harvesting. At some point each player starts making progress at the very same rate. Just look at the player progress graphs in the monthly review. That's not a competition, that's just a waiting game. Perhaps lifting the cap on all controllers is the answer, at least it would make things more consistent.

1. To make is that that RCL8 rooms can't snowball and totally boost GCL well beyond what a RCL 5 or RCL 6 room could. 
2. To encourage the use of XGH20
3. To encourage established players to go get new rooms even though it means giving up a RCL 8 room.

So what ever solution, 

#1 seems like it's broken. You can have an RCL 3 room "out produce" an RCL 8 room. I agree with the goal, but the limit doesn't seems to actually accomplish it. I think that is part of the problem. If the RCL 6 room was capped at 15/tick too then this would be a non-issue

#2 seems like it works. It's currently the only way to "legit" break the 15/tick cap.

#3 This may or may not be working I don't know. 

I see two fixes.

Fix A) 

Add the cap to all levels but make it sliding. cap = RCL * 10 or something. Boosts can still break the map as before. So a RCL 6 room is only going to get 60/tick. For people building the room, they have to decide if it's wort it to take the GCL loss, and really boost the room using tons of outside energy, or build at/near the cap. Because the cap is there, the incentive to use these "less reputable" methods fade. But using a dead storage to rebuild a room is still viable. 

#1 Snow balling is kept in check, though the limit is raised a bit. I can argue that RCL 8 rooms should be more valuable then RCL 6 rooms.

#2 Boosts are still important.

#3 You probably won't want to move rooms and give up your RCL 8 room. I don't know if this is actually different from now or not.

Fix

Keep the RCL 8 limit but apply the increase to the GCL only when you go up in RCL and only the first time.  When you git RCL 8 GCL progress applies normally. 

For example RCL 1 -> 2 -> 3 -> 2 -> 3 -> 4 would only increese GCL 3 times. This would have a lot of ripple effects though. Downgrades become horrid, as all that energy you poor into restoring a RCL is just lost. Loosing a room means loosing the RCL progress that would have gone into GCL. On the upside it makes holding on to a room more critical. 

#1 Same effect as now. 

#2 Same effect as now

#3 Still no real idea

Fix B is the larger game changer, but could introduce more fun.

this would fix this issue nicely , and prevent abuse

Currently, when you have a level 8 room you can do 15CP per 0.2 CPU while other rooms realistically can do 40CP per 0.2 CPU.

I personally have 30 rooms costing at least 6 CPU when all upgrading.

Yet I can achieve the same with dumping energy into another room and use 1 room to do all the upgrading.

This is why I think the current limits should be revised, or at least needs some balancing.

That said, there is already a MASSIVE gap to cover if a new player is trying to get onto a top 10 list. 

There needs to be someway that the game can "adjust" so it's not just who has been playing the longest, while at the same time, there should be a benefit to a carefully crafted long standing empire. 

If a terminal decayed at a rate so that by the time the controller decade to RCL 4 the terminal popped, the issue would largely go away. 

It would also still allow for some recovery via terminal in a dead room.