In my opinion yes. Along with scientific, and scav. Expansive got 'nerfed' too... but relatively buffed compared to everything else.
Here is my thinking.
So here are the important changes.
Steel mills cost more power. Hurts robotic and scientific most, expansive a tad, as they don't need as much steel. scav unaffected. Power barons ecstatic.
Robotic gets bonuses on its secondary’s from its primaries... which makes robotics’ claim efficiency strictly worse than scientific. I mean. it was as bad as scientific before, but understand: robotic can now have two (one block) iron mines and three steel mills producing 4.5 steel per second! but... scientific could just have 5 steel mills. It is also very hard to use, harder than scientific. I guess it is still a buff?
Robotics’ life support cost was doubled, making their debt generation from life support higher than the other races. (Ignoring variable fuel and power costs)
math (based on starting prices:
0.1*80 = 8 debt per second. (16 at lv 2)
Everyone else:
0.1*10+0.2+20+0.05+20 = 7 debt per second. (14 at lv 2)
(a side note on fuel vs power: power production is more claim efficient, however, power is much more expensive to build... and tends to rise very fast in the early game.. for that inital early game sprint, this makes fuel better than power, though mid-late game power is much better.)
Whatever. These above are minor. Here is the BIG change, and the nerf that is Huge to the game, and really kinda makes expansive the only race to play in multiplayer right now. On manager difficulty and above, players no longer start with life support!
What does this mean? Well. Before. At the start, everyone had 20 resources in the things they need.
If tally it up, 20 water at 10, 20 food at 20... And so on and so forth. You find that the races started with this much "extra cash" in resources:
Expansive: 4600 +2000 cash = 6600
Scientific: 4600 +2000 cash = 6600
Robotic: 4000 +2000 cash = 6000
Scavenger: 3800 +2000 cash = 5800 (poor scavs. sad face)
TO upgrade to lv 2, they required, at the starting prices:
Expansive:
4000 (40 steel, 80 AL, 20 glass)
Robotic
4800 (80 steel, 80 AL)
Scav
4800 (120 carbon, 80 AL, 20 glass)
Scientific
5600 (80 steel, 80 AL, 20 glass)
Now, everyone starts with:
Expansive
3200 +2000 = 5200
scientific
3200 + 2000 = 5200
Robotic
2400 + 2000 = 4400
Scav
2400 + 2000 = 4400
As you can see, compared to their upgrade cost, where before everyone has "enough" to upgrade (if they didnt use resources on, i don’t know, buildings), now:
Initial funds - upgrade cost:
Expansive: 1200 (perfectly twice as much as you need for three metal mines. how nice.)
Scientific: -400 (bummer, but they are ultra claim efficient.)
Scav: -400 (more bummer, but carbon is claim efficient at least?)
Robotic: -400 (even more bummer, adjacency bonus on 3 claims? don't make me laugh.)
That is huge. that is monstrous.
We can even look at it another way:
Previous starting resource monies vs now starting resource monies:
Expansive 3200/4600 = 69.57%
Scientific 3200/4600 = 69.57%
Robotic 2400/4000 = 60.00%
Scavenger 2400/4800 = 50.00%
If we normalize these... to "relative nerf" we find that robotic and scav's starting resource money has been nerfed by:
robotic
60/69.57 = 86% as good as expansive as before. (and they were already worse)
scavenger
50/69.57 = 72% as good as expansive as before. (they were close to being on par before, but this hurts hard.)
This is exasperated by the whole "found later get claims at rank 3 or rank 2" thing: robotic, scav, and scientific will be stuck on 3 claims no matter what. And that upgrading later usually means higher prices for that upgrade, and thus you fall even further behind.
In other words, as it stand right now, Expansive Is out the gate MUCH faster than everyone else right now, AND only gets further ahead even faster.
So. I am going to say it. Expansive is OP in the current patch. And robotic is at least just as bad as before.
Here is some empirical proof:
Of the games played by streamers on the date of 3/19/2015. I watched 25 games. Of the player who won each of those games their colony type was:
19 games won by expansive.
5 something not expansive. (three scav, two scientific)
1 game with no expansive players. (scientific won)
0 games with only expansive players.
0 games ended inconclusively.
Of those games, expansive has a 79% win rate.
I hope you didnt glaze over on that math. hopefully I math-ed it all up correctly. Very curious on your thoughts on the matter.