I don't think it's as big of a deal as you're making it out to be at the endgame. Before that, yeah, it can be hard getting the clusters, but think about it this way. ALL of the endgame sectors drop Deep Color Clusters. 17&20 drop red, 18&21 drop green, and 19&22 drop blue. Four rank 50 ships can hit 3 sectors every 4 days. That's ~6 chances per day. The wheels take 3 days to charge and you can only charge one at a time (I think?), so that's 18 chances to get clusters before you need them. Each drop gives ~4.5 at a time, so you need to get them twice out of those 18 chances. That's pretty darn good odds.

This is a huge boon for small FCs. It doesn't matter how good or bad the buffs are, getting the buffs via Company Credits costs, well, Company Credits. The whole point of the Grade 2 and Grade 3 wheels are that they save you Company Credits, offsetting the Company Credit cost of fuel for airship ventures. Once you get to endgame, if your ships are going slow enough, you can eke out positive Company Credit gains from airship ventures due to the Aetherial Wheels.

The one thing that's a little annoying about the system is that you can only use one wheel every 3 days, which means only 1/6th of the cost can be offset by wheels. I suppose you could have one ship running SC05, SC06, and SC07 repeatedly looking for Deep Color Crystals to make the rank 2 wheels so you can charge one of each at a time (I'm assuming the tier 3 stand lets you charge one level 2 and one level 3 wheel since the tier 2 one does one level 1 and one level 2), but you'll get tons of garbage items that way too. If you charge both a 2 and a 3, then you can nearly halve your company credit expenditure on FC Actions.


You can't balance these things for the midgame. You have to balance for the endgame. And no one is there yet with airships.