tl;dr: The basic warponium refining research, on account of how early it can be unlocked, can cause soft-locking since the only way to actually refine any warponium effectively only unlocks MUCH later with the warp power.
This is what killed my first 20-hr run with this mod - I unlocked warponium refining almost immediately after unlocking green science because shiny and new, then realized that I couldn't actually do anything with it until 10s of hours later. Unfortunately, in the interim, I lost my surface level platform to a boss and the repair costs for all components included warponium plates. I struggled through multiple markets, scavenging resources for 5 mins at a time with burners before having to retreat into the ship and waiting the remaining 20 or so mins to leave but eventually had to abandon the run since I couldn't get a hold of any warponium.
IMO the position on the tech tree of that research is a trap for players new to the mod and adds no value to experienced players - they will know to avoid it until much later since unlocking it only has downsides - it dilutes all the random pools with no effective way to gather warponium until the mid-game.
Suggested fixes -
1. Move the techs around such that warponium refining unlocks AFTER warp power platforms.
2. (and/or) Pseudo-Guaranteed market purchases for warponium ore. Consider, until mid-game, the drop pool for fluids (which has two slots in the market) consists of just three items - water, warp fuel and oil, whereas the 2 slots for solids cycles through stone, coal, iron ore, copper ore, warponium ore, calcite and scrap (btw, why are these two available here before I have access to the techs for using them?). Might be better to have warp fuel and warp ore share one slot, have one fluid slot cycle between all other fluids and retain the 2 slots for other basic resources.
Closing note - excellent mod, Factorio rogue-like mode FTW. Can't wait to see how this develops further.
