Any chance for an Aquilio start? Not sure what tech you'd need to start there, besides medium power poles and a heating tower. :)

There are no raw resources on Aquilio, you need to import everything...not sure how you expect to start there.

Plus even if you did somehow hack together a mod to start there, launching a platform will instantly die because you don't have rocket launchers and the platform won't have time to build before it is destroyed.

I've been thinking about this, and there would be a few ways to handle an Aquilo start.

Ignoring the bootstrap problems (starting from nothing).

Let's first look at self-sustaining on Aquilo. For that, the two initial issues are iron, stone and copper. All 3 are needed, and cannot be sourced here.

In theory, you could have a Aquilo orbit start, and drop down iron and copper from orbit, but that would require post 3 planet research, and an orbital platform. Wouldn't give you stone however, unless asteroids are modified to also produce some stone (not completely unreasonable?)

Another option, a simple one, would be to add resources patches to Aquilo. Turning it into a frozen mix of Nauvis and Aquilo. Feels a bit like the most boring option.

I think, the most interesting option, is to have a mineral sludge like solution that the seablock mod has. Maybe the water is just contaminated with minerals, and you can extract those.

Could also combine the two options, have iron/copper be from sludge, while stone is from resource patches.

(bootstrapping is a whole other story that requires more thought then I have now)

I feel like the correct answer for an Aquilo start is to give the player a starting space platform above Aquilo.

The platform starts with just enough items to harvest asteroids and process them and self-expand. A few asteroid collectors, crushers, solar panels, furnaces, and assemblers. And probably a few belts and inserters for early space platform automation... unless you want to force the player to do it all manually. Until the player manages to build a rocket, they will have only one platform as their source of iron/copper and stone.

There will need to be a few tweaks to asteroid crushing recipes. Advanced asteroid processing needs to be unlocked from the start (maybe even disable the original basic crushing recipes) to allow for reprocessing oxide asteroids and producing copper ore. The recipes should be modified to produce stone as a byproduct.

There might need to be a few other balance tweaks (there is currently no way to build new crusher, collectors or electric furnaces without plastic, and the current chain for that is very long) , but this starting space platform should allow the player to bootstrap all the way from nothing on Aquilo to launching rockets.

Plus even if you did somehow hack together a mod to start there, launching a platform will instantly die because you don't have rocket launchers and the platform won't have time to build before it is destroyed.

This mod already disables harmful astroids above the other planets, to allow constructing platforms there. The same would apply to Aquilo too.

+1 for space start

Tweaking all the asteroid recipes to produce one (1) stone as a byproduct (including reprocessing) would be the maximally evil way to fix the stone problem. Railgun should be unlockable with just cryo science, and there should be an underpowered version you can build with only aquilo resources to let you reach the rest of the solar system.

Another alternative is to use Sea Block tech - allow the player to refine minerals from Aquilo's waters, starting with some minerals they mine from the surrounding blocks. Heat tech needs to be unlockable as soon as possible, of course. And maybe a crude heater you can build directly above an oil deposit - this "wastes" the oil until you can get Pumpjack technology, but allows you to get some heating in so you can actually build stuff.