Really enjoyed this, the multiple sources of income through VM Rentals, Rent, and Contracts keeps the data center build-out feeling fresh throughout, I particularly liked building server racks specifically for the high-tier clients, it was really rewarding! I also really love that contracts have varied pay structures, getting surges at the beginning and end of contracts and stacking them for high revenue is really fun, and I like that if I'm about to prestige I can target signing bonuses to squeeze out that last R&D.
Now, I had a few problems with the design. I think the biggest issue currently is that with how it's balanced, the Next-Gen system is really unfun, R&D takes a long time to earn, and the values on the upgrades are very low, fixed, and the cost doubles every purchase, those things together made me not want to build out my second data center after my 1st run, which was really long and I had a ton of fun with.
Secondly, I took big issue with the random events, especially the heat related ones, I feel especially heatwave serves no purpose except to force you to keep reserve cash on hand to buy cooling for your most expensive racks, that on top of not knowing exactly which racks will overheat in a heatwave feels pretty bad. There is also the fact that heatwave is rather common, and can stack with server meltdown, forcing you either lose your current contracts, or cough up a ton of money for cooling you won't need in 30 seconds. Similarly, the opposite event lets you buy a bunch of hardware and utilize it for a short time without cooling it, but as soon as the event ends you have to spend on cooling, making the event pretty pointless. The revenue and efficiency based events are also pretty boring in my opinion, efficiency audit has similar problems to the cold event, and the event that reduces your revenue really sucks to be frank. Taking a large hit to your revenue right after you accepted a high revenue contract (something players in the mid-game will be really targeting) feels REALLY bad.
Finally, I think that the hardware selection is a bit bloated, and many of the pieces of hardware are redundant, and differences in power/rent/size are so minor that it doesn't really allow for any interesting decision making. Just a small idea might be some of the components coming with integrated cooling, or the universal modules being able to fully convert to serve the role of either 8 CPUs or 8GPUs, for example, that would be super useful for making servers for large clients who reserve racks.
I think this game has a ton of potential and I really like where you're taking the concept, excited to see more!
P.S. IDK if I missed a tutorial or something but I have no clue what specialization multiplier does
Hello! Thank you for taking the time to write this awesome review and give me all of this feedback and for your kind words! I really appreciate it and this is exactly what I am looking for because it really helps in my development process! I will look into everything you mentioned especially the random events and the next-gen system. I also will make the specialization system a little clearer as right now I see what you are saying there are basically no indicators to what it does.
I will be updating in the coming days for sure! Feel free to join my discord if you want to follow along and leave more feedback!