Firstly, good mod. Adding Copper as a byproduct of Lead processing is good because it complicates the early-game smelting setup quite a bit, and more depth is almost always good, in my opinion.
However, I feel like this has an unintended side-effect in Space Age, especially with the 2.1 update.
In the vanilla version of Space Age, getting Copper from asteroid processing is a late-game technology and requires visiting Gleba since it normally requires the Advanced Asteroid Processing research. This is quite a nice reward for going to Gleba.
With the Lead mod, it's possible to get copper in the midgame on a basic space station by simply using the basic Asteroid crushing recipe. The Space Thruster research gives you the more advanced version that lets you get Iron.
This lets you craft advanced (red) ammo, as well as Space Platform Foundation in space, entirely for free.
With the 2.1 update allowing you to transfer items between space platforms, you can essentially keep all your space platforms full on red ammo for free from the midgame onwards, which would normally require Gleba-level tech, plus you can make space platform in space for free as well, simply by using the advanced asteroid crusing recipe. It's not hyper-efficient, but it doesn't need to be, since any excess lead can simply be voided, and it's always going to be cheaper to scale up your space platform with a few more smelters than using rockets.
One of the important balance factors of 2.0 was limiting the rocket capacity of weapon magazines, to encourage building ammo on-the-fly. Now, with the 2.1 update, I can essentially undermine all of that balance entirely and craft an infinite stream of red bullets with relatively good efficiency in a single location and send it to anywhere, plus all the space platform I could ever need which makes building more space platforms extremely cheap very early on.
Obviously in the base game this is also possible, but I feel like the earlier access to space-based copper in the Lead mod really exacerbates the balance.
I have a few possible solutions:
- Add a separate "space-only" version of the lead smelting recipe that produces no byproducts (using some hand-waivey explanation like asteroids don't contain the right amounts of copper to extract, or something). This is hacky and unintuitive, but would be the simplest solution I feel.
- Add an extra step to the Lead->Copper production chain. Instead of the lead smelting recipe simply spitting out usable copper ore occasionally, maybe it should spit out an intermediate, which then needs to be further processed in a chemical plant to produce copper ore (or copper plates, as an interesting alternative way to get copper plates without simply plugging them into your existing copper smelting setup), which requires nauvis' gravity, and so can't be done in space.
Of course it's also possible I'm just making a big deal over nothing. This is based on a feeling of the mid-game space platform gameplay being too easy due to early copper availability in space, but I don't have hard numbers to back it up.
