What's up with lab intermediates? Am I really supposed to build a huge mall to craft 10 labs or should I sit there handcrafting these things? They are not used for anything else and are completely useless if you need no additional labs. I find it weird that I am the first to complain about that that here.

Could we have an option to replace the intermediates in the lab's recipes with their raw materials, please?

I also had another idea how to keep intermediates in the lab's recipes: Use the science pack's intermediates instead.
This is also good game design, because if you still have a use for them later, you are more inclined to build a small mall for them, therefore getting a feeling how to make them and notice where the challenge with the recipes is.
You can absolutely start with a small mall to make them and once you have enough for the labs, you can add assemblers for the other intermediates and immediately start with a trickle of the new science packs. Once you have finished the proper factory for the science packs, you can jumpstart it with the intermediates of the old mall. A lategame mall can just pull in the intermediates from the science pack production.
More advanced players would just build the science setup and pull out the intermediates to craft the labs.

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