A hard confirmation from a dev or similar would be extremely appreciated. I've heard both yes and no, I've tested it and found it to be inconclusive. 

No, that was already said by them somewhere.

Yet we can find videos of them saying the opposite during streams. It would seem if it is true they would disable energy investment in said nodes. As a matter of fact I recall in game a questline saying the opposite of that as well.

If you invest into a node it increase the aimity on the NPCs of that node. Also PA not know from doing consistent things so this is not argument here.

IDK what steam do you talk, but some of the KR ppl said it's doesn't affecting it on one of the balls u can look back if u really wish, but IDK why ppl even assume it should affect it when the ingame tooltip clearly states what it do affect.

All the same, I'm looking for something official, not another player that has the exact information everyone else does. That information being contradictory and inconclusive at best.

Yeah i was also wondering if PA could once give an official statement to this, i also think it doesnt do anything but too many rumors are there and a single Statement would clear that. People speculating over this in Chat/YT/Twitch etc. 

i wish

So there was a theory they implemented sub nodes levels using energy to boost production. It has a placebo effect of increase. It was in a design phase but never released. No one knows what the subnode energy levels were designed for tbvh even though in game it says they do something but they never have. Imo it should be added that energy makes a boost for them subnodes  even if its increase the chance of rare items from the nodes(which was what was first thought to effect the nodes like the main nodes increasing droprate).  Game has pre beta information of things that havent actually been added in some quests(i assumed the removed most of that information by now). So the quests can say one thing but could never have been implemented unfortunately 

OP, you should make another thread proposing that the system is repaired / completed. I'm sure it's not a terribly hard thing to implement with how much better their engine is since beta. I don't believe that it does anything but there was an intent during development but was never actually completed. There are quite a few features in-game that aren't completed but this is one of thsoe things where many people have max node investments and yet they do nothing. I think you would get a lot of community support for this :D