itch.io

I don't think it's possible to balance out a "cheating mechanism". I haven't done anything beside opening it and calling the help function on 2 separate occasion, so I don't know just how powerful the cheat terminal is, but if you can just give yourself X amount of tempo or X amount of producers (those are a few of the function I vaguely remember), I think it's impossible to balance it. This is because there's only 3 different state the terminal can put the player in, a downgrade, an upgrade, or it balance out.

A downgrade means you give a harsher punishment for whatever function is being used, but if this is the case, then no one wants to use the cheat terminal beside completing the hidden achievements/criminal records. An upgrade means the punishment is lighter than the cheat function, but if that's the case then it's more optimal to use the cheat over actually playing (probably what you want to avoid). And when it balance out, it means whatever punishment is given is roughly fair compared to what cheat was used, but if that's the case that is less of a "cheat terminal" and more of a trading shop or some kind.

If you allow cheats for players, then I think you just have to accept that there are some bad apples that would cheat their way through to the finish line. If you're fine with that, I think the cheat terminal is fine (though I still think function that does nothing like the .help() function shouldn't give penalty since you've done nothing so far), but if not then I do have a suggestion of replacing the cheat terminal to some kind of automation terminal. for example, you can automate clicking or buying upgrades, letting the players run their own code on what actions they want to take. to balance it, you can set a limit like "this terminal's RAM could only do 1 action every second" or "the terminal can only store 5 sets of actions", then having something like gems that lets you upgrade the spec so that it can run more actions and/or run actions at a faster pace. it's not the same as a cheat terminal, but it will let you keep the secret terminal system in place (though you will need to code a lot more stuff into it if you plan something like this. Also I know there's a "bot" that also click but, they don't get the promotion bonus from what I can tell, so having an actual automation that click and move your pawn is a hundred times better than the current bot system.)

for the analysis... I honestly don't know what suggestion to give to balance that. If it were me, I would just get rid of it and instead making it cost gems or something, since you could farm gems once you're in the late game with the prestige (or at least from my understanding you can by just prestige-ing as soon as it's available and get 5 gems in return). I just really hate the idea that a game require X amount time to finish, not because the game is challenging, interesting, or fun, but because the developer said so.

If I'm being honest, I think you should just let people finish the game as quickly as they want to. The game you have right now has a lot of content already and I could see myself playing for a decently long time. Whether I finish in 50, 200, or 1000 hours, the game would be enjoyable to play. If a player can't stand not winning in 10 minutes or less, they either don't have enough patient for a long game, don't like this genre of game, or they simply want to play a quick simple game to hop in and hop out on, in which case I don't think it matters how long takes to generate the requires analysis to finish the game.