The new tech layout would be a bit clearer if new items such as monel were prerequisites for some of the things that use them - fluid handling specifically for monel, for example. Also, having those prereqs might make it more clear how to get silicon stone, which goes into monel. I eventually discovered that you need silicon processing to find silicon. If that's a prereq of monel, I wouldn't spend time researching monel until I can actually produce it.

For monel in particular, another idea is to consider adding an ore field such as garnierite which has a chance of producing iron, nickel, or silicon. Then the user can have the sorting challenge of separating those into their usable components. Then you could have an alternate recipe for making monel which uses nickel plates instead of iron. Not sure this is a direction you want to take the mod, but it's a possibility. Depends on how complex you want to make things, I guess!

I had an idea to add monel pipes which would be the only pipes that could contain sulfuric acid as a fluid. Nickel, I haven't added it yet because I thought it was a bit of a bad idea to add an ore that would be only used to create monel, I think the nickel will be added in the next mod "Enchanted Industries & Chemicals" which will add many more elements which could make nickel more useful and therefore modify the recipe for nickel.

Fair enough. Could also have an alternate recipe which uses nickel and iron for steel (not sure a single furnace can have a recipe using two plates unless the furnace itself is modded). Such a recipe would let you launch nickel into space, which is the important thing to not have giant piles of a resource accumulate in the factory.

Anyway, looking forward to the combination with the next mod!