So this isn't a bug exactly, nor a suggestion. But natural gas is weird. It can be turned into methane. Fair enough - IRL it is mostly methane. But there is no good way to make it. The acid gas recipe is usable, I guess - I may have to add this to my base in a box with some logic circuitry.

Thing is, it isn't required for much either as far as I can see. It is a very useful way to a couple of things, however there are other (and far more renewable) ways to these. But it IS required for manganese pellet smelting.

I'm not really sure what I'm asking for here. Maybe an additional recipe for the smelting which uses methane? At least for someone to think about this and agree that it is janky and either say the jank is staying or come up with a solution to the jank.

Well, natural gas is supposed to be primarily a gatherable resource, like oil. Producing it from acid gas is ~a recipe I'd never noticed before~ a secondary source.

Going by my experience with the BZ mods on their own, the lion's share of natural gas went into formaldehyde and thence Bakelite, which I'd expect to hold in ATOM too. (Though there's also a variety of other sources for formaldehyde available, so it's a bit "use what's convenient".) Methane, of course, comes from SE and is used mostly in SE stuff. Both have enough applications in game already that I don't think there's any need to add more just for the sake of having them.

I'd agree, except that natural gas isn't available on some planets. And having oil but no gas (or visa versa) makes basically no sense. And, my Nauvis base uses natural gas for what you say it should be used for. I have a conditional logic which allows for gas to be used for bakelite in my base in a box too. But I found that on worlds with no gas, I needed an alternative, so I use one of the many algae renewable recipes to make formaldehyde to a minimum level and only allow gas to be used once it is at 1/4 of capacity. Before that it is reserved for manganese.

As for oil. Well... I guess that's why Base in a box took so long to make.... Yeah, it can be gathered, but it can be made renewably too. And I switch to the less efficient recipe which plows through wood via coal when there is a shortfall of oil.

It kind of doesn't matter. My design will just keep destroying the resources which are either full or unprocessable until everything is full, and then make landfill, and then destroy landfill if that gets full.

I'd agree, except that natural gas isn't available on some planets. And having oil but no gas (or visa versa) makes basically no sense.

Well, to some extent that's "Space Exploration doing Space Exploration things". It's kind of expected for planets to not be self-sufficient.

Pegging oil and gas availability together is one of those things that's theoretically possible, but I'm not really sure how, or that it would be desirable from a gameplay perspective.