I have played Warp Drive Machine twice now. Once with a funny mod that changed the balance a bit, starting on difficulty 1, changing to difficulty 5 once I realized there was a difficulty setting. And once naturally, starting with difficulty 5. All runs included Toxic Biters, Explosive Biters, Cold Biters, Rocket-Silo-Constriction, ArmouredBites, ZombieHordeFaction and aai-loaders, and space age enabled as suggested.
First, this is an amazing mod. It belongs in a category of it's own, beyond overhaul mods (the only other one that comes to mind in the same league are UltraCube, and Space Exploration). It was fun, sometimes frustrating, and often full of surprises. But on a scale of one to ten, this is easily an 11. Having gone through it twice, I of course have a few suggestions.
A) The existence of the difficulty setting needs to be made more obvious. Difficulty level 1 can get somewhat dull. Difficulty level 5 is always a hoot. Somewhere it needs to be made more obvious to the player that they're running easy mode, and that there is more there, if they want it.
B) You should probably add Picker Dollies to the list of "incompatible" mods. It completely ruins what turret-activation-delay tries to enforce. You can just build anywhere, let the turret charge, then move it into place once charged. Or perhaps somehow detect the move, and force a recharge. Either way, I resisted the temptation, mostly.
C) Quality. If quality is enabled, you need Quality Pirates. Otherwise the player can just outrange the Pirates. If my laser turret outranges their laser turret, I win, without being in danger. I have a lot of ideas kicking around my head, but the simplest is that all Pirate compounds should simply spawn 100% made of the highest quality the player has unlocked. If the player wants to go EMP turret vs EMP turret, the player may have to be the one that has to catch up.
D) UPS Dives. Sometimes UPS just craters to about 3. You can feel it, you can tell when it's starting, and sometimes that's why I left a planet (and the slowness would stay until the last planet was unpersisted, but then UPS shot back up to 60.0. I played with the settings, I tried to narrow it down, but at the end of the day I uninstalled Explosive Biters and it seemed to stop happening. It doesn't mean it's Explosive Biters fault, it's just how I happened to solve the problem.
E) Space Age Planets should default to being non-persistant. If the player wants them persistant, make them set it that way. Non-persistent space age planets is far closer to main theme of the mod. Land, get what you can, build what you can, then pack it all up. Non-persistent smash-and-grabs works on all the Space Age planets. Personally, I did not expand my defense ring the last main floor upgrade, and that outer edge just became where buildings for the space age planets lived. I would land, build, hook chains up, then have to leave. I've read reports of people who say this mod is basically over once they reach space age, and with persistent planets, I can see why. But with non-persistant space age planets, the spirit of the mod remains to the end.
F) My only real frustration was a combination of two things near the end. 1) I understand why there are timers preventing you from moving faster in the early and mid games. The timeing not being under your control is part of the challenge. But in the end game, like once you've solve the puzzle, and are pirate hunting, there should be no more mandatory countdowns. Under no threat, they just waste real life time. Combine this with 2) Return To Planet which really did not work as advertised most of the time. Of the times it said it had set a course successfully, it would only actually return 1 in 10. And then you have to wait (or reload), and try again. Yes, I used it right (I think??). I would pick a planet. I would press Return to Planet. I would wait for the scanner to complete. It would emit a message saying return to planet was successful name the right planet, and I would hit Warp, and as I said, 1 in 10 odds at best that I landed on the right planet, usually instead spawning a new one. This made endgame pirate hunting insanely frustrating, taking real time (about 3 hours), of mostly waiting.
But those times where (when combined with another mod that increases weapons ranges) I landed in full artillery range of the main pirate base, and I had incoming fire before my turrets were even online, the wars were GLORIOUS. Nuclear reactors at the edge of my base are still at 1000 degrees because they used to be connected to heat pipes on Aquilo, and now I've got incoming artillery fire? Construction robots desperately trying to keep up with the incoming fire. Me building decoy turrets all over the place just to absorb the incoming fire, and deconstructing nuclear reactors.... I'm willing to set aside the hours it took to make return to planet work because when it did, wow were the results amazing.
Absolutely, positively, a top tier mod. Whatever I play next will probably pale in comparison to it.
