There is a bit of a problem with the economy that has been known for quite some time. It is to do with a disconnect between tooltips and what actually happens in the game. In effect the tooltips say that everything is 6% cheaper than it actually is. To fix the discrepancy everything would either become cheaper or have ugly numbers.
In the early days of the Spring engine someone must have loved powers of 2 while someone else thought that games should run at 30 frames per second. The result is that economy updates occur every 16 frames while the simulation runs at 30 frames per second. Economy things do half of their stated action every update. For example Solars produce 1 energy every 16 frames.
This affects everything. Mexes and power plants have a bit less income than you think they do. Constructors drain a bit less. These things have 93.75% of their stated value.
The difference is irrelevant when trying to balance your economy, the UI numbers are still useful for that. Everything has less income and drains less so perfect balance is still perfect balance. The difference does not even matter for metal and energy cost. I have tested, if you perfectly balance your economy and then make a Guess it costs 400 metal. The distinction is that it will take 85 seconds to complete with 5 BP, not 80.
The distinction between tooltip and the real behaviour cancels out until you consider how long it takes to build something. But time is the fundamental resource so it seems fairly important. So making the game match the tooltips would make the entire economy run faster.
The fix would involve increasing the income and BP of all economy structures and constructors and then displaying the current value on the UI. This would also have to be taken into account in guide generation. Alternately the multiplier in the engine could be changed but that would affect all games. I am not sure whether they would accept that.
Fixing this is probably worthwhile. We should snatch up opportunities to reduce economy confusion where possible. Currently people could doubt the simplicity of the economy if they look closely at ETA or stockpile times and notice the discrepancy.
I worry a bit about the effects. ZK would become faster.