Per discussions in slack:
Portals should start rare/short range, and increase in frequency towards the end. This helps accomplish many of the goals I talked about previously for smaller maps.
Energy gets very abundant at some points. However, "temple" rooms and power creeps - the two ways to increase energy use - aren't very feasible in season due to the time limits lowering their time horizon. Should seasonal see the removal of the 15e/t cap at RCL8? Or incorporate energy into scoring (eg having to process it first like power) to provide a new sink?
A further idea - being able to change a symbol using energy. It would cost X energy and Y ticks in a lab reaction to turn one tick in either direction per the wheel. This would provide an energy sink. This would allow better solo play, while retaining co op as the most efficient path. Good decoder choice would still be important, as the further away on the wheel the symbol is, the more lab time and energy it takes to make compatible. With a good choice of rate cap on a decoder, it may not be feasible to force 5 different symbols into it anyways.
Finally, a lot of us want to see the convoy lifestyle that would arise from no terminals at all. What if symbols couldn't be sent thru terminal? This would increase the value of locality of decoders. I think this would create an interesting counterbalance to the "maximize remote sources" meta of MMO, which was amplified by the "maximize score gathering reach" of season 1. This would mesh well with being able to modify symbols - with a far decoder, do you pay energy to transport, or to modify?