I'm running into the same problems, perhaps even worse.
Even with maximum productivity in all buildings while only using Vaterite when it is impossible to substitute with imports, it will still be by far the biggest bottleneck on this planet for a plethora or reasons.
I've surveyed my map for around 10 minutes with maxed gear, and eventually my legendary cargo landing pad in hand for its scanning capabilities, and I've revealed around 250M Tetrahedrite, 160M Sphaelerite and absolutely zero additional Vaterite. I don't know what you want us to do with all that excess copper, iron, water and sulfur, but nothing can be done on this planet without Vaterite. And if I need to import the majority of intermediates to conserve my starting patch, all those excess ores are completely pointless. No amount of mining productivity will change that fact.
Nitrogen is superfluous both as a challenge as well as an ingredient, as every single recipe asking for it also needs some form of Vaterite. You could delete Nitrogen from every single recipe, and the planet would play exactly the same as far as balance is concerned. It suffers from the same problem as Fluorine, which likewise cannot exist without Holmium. Nitrogen and Fluorine add little to their respective recipes.
All the nitric acid substitution recipes are a trap if you import materials, because one must minimize Vaterite waste, right?. But some alternative recipes aren't even viable even if you refuse to import goods and produce everything locally, like the ones for batteries and processing units. If those useless excess resources give me oceans of iron ore, copper ore, sulfur and water, the most complex thing I can make with those are batteries. Boring, vanilla batteries made from copper plates, iron plates and sulfuric acid --> Nitric acid batteries seem strictly worse with and without imports. Processing units are also terrible, saving some green chips for double the cost of red chips. I can already make green chips from the hundreds of millions in excess Sphalerite and Tetrahedrite resource patches, why would I substitute those with the more costly plastic that must come from Vaterite? The recipes also features higher complexity, slower crafting speeds and somehow higher cost without any gains. The extra zinc cost is the cherry on top.
( Non-import alternative recipes that share Vaterite as their primary ingredient can also be beaten by their vanilla counterpart, but I consider this a cool feature. Lubricant from heavy oil costs up to 22% less carbon than the one from nitric acid, while offering surplus light oil without costing extra nitric acid. The light oil alone is worth half of that difference again in Vaterite when compared via the fuel block recipe. And as per usual, nitric acid lubricant is slower than its vanilla counterpart, but less complex for once. Similarily less complex are fuel blocks from nitrogen, but converting vaterite to carbon and then to fuel blocks yields around 10% more, plus extra calcite. Vaterite productivity research further boosts this ratio, so this is a plus in my book. Fuel blocks from carbon can also be used as a sink for surplus sulfur, which means extra fuel blocks from petroleum further making them superior. I guess this encourages processing the hundred of millions of Sphalerite/Tetrahedrite to squeeze out extra fuel blocks.)
It doesn't help that, without imports, any Paracelsin base can't survive without claiming new Vaterite patches or burning sulfur, as its thermal power draw relies on either. Burning the sulfur from ores is terrible as it produces useless excess zinc concentrate, which you wouldn't be able to handle without some silly fluid voiding designs. Storing it endlessly in tanks made out of excess steel only works on paper, as their 100kW thermal power draw makes that unviable and yet another trap. Pressing the "void fluid"-button manually every few minutes on expensive zinc tanks is also unfun. Your base will either freeze or have to eat away at your precious Vaterite, your choice. So fail to find a new patch in time, and your base is guaranteed to suffer a catastrophic collapse. Oh, and eventually you will have to connect new patches with trains, as other forms of transportation are costly to heat over distances of 50+ chunks. But trains also consume fuel, which falls into the same category as building heat costs. Without imports, every new Vaterite patch only delays the inevitable collapse of your doomed base.
And finally, researching Vaterite Processing Productivity does nothing for those who import its products, so the ore patches will remain as sparse as they are. In fact, wasting Vaterite on the required science packs seems to be yet another trap to avoid in that situation. Plus, it also offers similar materials to Asteroid productivity, which is likely what you'll use when importing, taking away further science packs from a superior technology. Other than that, this tech is interesting for those who don't import and definitely helps.
I've tried really hard to figure out the "Vaterite Puzzle". Unfortunately, in its current state, all I can do is import as much as possible and hope it doesn't take more than 15 minutes of flying around to find another 150k patch. And that goes exclusively into nitric acid, which goes exclusively into science packs and zinc-based infrastructure. Everything else I could be doing with Vaterite feels like a luxury I will have to pay with even more "looking for more"-time on Paracelsin, which currently sits at an infinity-time-per-patch cost all things considered. And while I don't think you had this exact situation in mind design-wise, this is how it played out for me so far. My map for reference: https://i.postimg.cc/Z52v4XCX/vaterite.png
I can't think of many improvements to the situation that wouldn't make the mineral completely useless. Alternative recipes for nitric acid without it are problematic, as this is the only unique thing Vaterite does. This means either the mineral or the existing nitric acid substitution recipes are useless depending on potential changes. So a good start would be to give Vaterite a second "unique" use, so you can relieve its importance for nitric acid and thus allow players to utilize those acid recipes more freely. My best idea would be to add Vaterite to the science pack directly and offer an unlockable recipe for nitric acid that substitutes Vaterite for stone. This would allow non-import players to balance out production conserving Vaterite, and import-players to unironically start using nitric acid outside of zinc/science. It would also breath more life into Concrete Productivity, as the tech reduces the science pack's stone consumption, leaving more for acid.
That, or Vaterite must become less non-existent.
Pretty cool mod. :)
