like the person below me pointed out, the realms section of this game is genuine mental torture. i'm on the east realm as i'm writing this, and the shield and screamer nodes make it fully unplayable. i try to expand, then i see a screamer node. so i think to myself, okay, i'll just destroy it, except it's defended by a shield node somewhere i can't see. so now i have to pick between spending 15 minutes whittling this shielded screamer node down, or trying (and fully failing) to expand to the point i can see the shield node. there are times when it feels 100% impossible to find the shield node due to the screamer nodes making exploration impossible. even now, knowing where a screamer node is in a level, i can't manage to get to it without it being extremely unfun and frustrating. also, the pylons feel very buggy, i don't feel like the game explains properly that sometimes you need a pylon RIGHT next to a stabilizer for it to expand, and other times it's okay if the pylon is 2 hexes away from the stabilizer.
my suggestions are:
-make shield nodes weaker (instead of them making other nodes 10x harder to break, make it 4x or 5x at most)
-add a visual indicator or on-screen explanation for why a stabilizer is only purifying a hex up to "neutral" and refuses to go any higher, or a specific range for pylons (it looks like they have 2 different ranges, the range where they allow power to be channeled into your nodes, and the range where they allow stabilizers to fully purify new nodes)
sorry for the long message and potentially harsh criticism, but i've genuinely gotten incredibly frustrated with the lack of clarity and what feels like straight up untested and unfair gameplay, as i've otherwise had a great time playing this game