Thank you for making these mods. I appreciate the work that you put into them, and I have enjoyed playing with them. Making them compatible with multiple different configurations of mods is no easy task. I wanted to give my feedback on the mods and pack as a whole since I just got most of the way through a playthrough of just SE + this modpack.
Just to get a very basic breakdown, according to FNEI here is the number of recipes each major simple resource is directly used in:
Iron - 53
Steel (Iron) - 91
Gear (Iron) - 40
Copper - 33
Copper Cable - 22
Oil/petroleum/sulfur/lube - 40 ish
Stone + Bricks - 27
Coal (+1 for fuel) - 15
Uranium235 - 9
Glass (Stone) - 44
Cryonite - 23
Vulcanite - 7 (if you count all smelting multiplication as just one use)
Beryllium - 14
Aeroframes (Beryllium) - 26
Holmium - 10
Holmium cable - 22
Iridium - 23
Heavy Girder (Iridium) - 24
Naquium - 16
Silica + Silicon (Stone) - 17
Lead - 26
Pipe (lead, kinda) - 29
Titanium - 32
Tungsten - 29
Tungsten Carbide - 9
Zirconia - 9
Zirconium - 10
And a few intermediate items for comparison:
Green circuit - 66
Red circuit - 58
Plastic - 9
Low density structure - 59
Heat shielding - 43
Small electric motor - 25
Aeroframe Bulkhead - 15
Cermet - 9
These numbers mean nothing by themselves, but I think it is a useful reference. For example, I can say that without a doubt, my favorite mod of yours is lead.
Lead adds some variety right at the very start, and dealing with copper ore as a byproduct early on is interesting. Lead is used in pretty much everything relating to fluids, batteries/acid, and some ammo/turrets. There are a handful of other miscellaneous things unrelated to those categories, but not a ton. And I think that's the best thing about the mod, being extremely common in one aspect means that it's easy to wrap your head around and feels like it makes sense once you're used to it, and then having a handful of scattered uses makes it feel like the resource isn't too one-note.
Zircon is my least favorite, for primarily this reason. Zirconia is basically exclusively used in making alloys. Cermet is made of basically the same stuff that low density structures are made of, so it feels redundant. Zirconium is used in a small handful of seemingly unrelated recipes. When I look at a chest full of copper, I think "Great, now I can make a bunch of things with circuits". When I look at a chest full of lead, I think "Great, now I can expand my fluid handling". When I look at a recipe that requires zirc-something I think "Great, now I have to deal with this extra crap". I automated blue science before I ever put a miner on a zircon patch. The amount of zircon that I needed was so low, that it was simpler for me to just convert it from stone than bother with a dedicated setup.
Titanium is very good. The timing in the tech tree is great: it comes in-between oil processing and the ores that can only be found on other planets, which is a HUGE gap, so it's good that titanium can fill it. It's easy to remember primary categories: power armor equipment and basic space infrastructure. There are only a couple recipes that use it outside of those categories, so it feels like maybe it could use a couple more uses, just for variety, but low density structures are so important that I never think "oh jeeze, what am I going to do with all this titanium".
Which brings me to tungsten. I don't see the point of tungsten carbide. Even in my interplanetary factory, I've never needed to put it on a belt. Before getting bots I just had a few furnaces putting it into a chest, and I'd manually move a dozen stacks into a chest next to my 1 or 2 assemblers that needed it, and then not have to worry about it for a dozen hours. I have no idea why I'd ever need the advanced carbon furnace. Delaying lamps until after green science is annoying if you're going to use lamps at all. At the time you unlock it, the only thing you use any significant quantity for is ammo. Then, you need it for blue science, and don't need it again until around purple science. So other than ammo and blue science, you can have tungsten for 20-30 hours and only use a couple stacks of it. It's not inherently bad to have a resource that you unlock early and don't make much use of until way later, but It leaves tungsten feeling like it's missing a lot.
And finally, to tie everything together, silicon. Stone can be used by itself, turned into sand, then into glass, or smelted into bricks, then crafted into stone tablets, or smelted into silica, then smelted into silicon. It can also be turned into zircon, then zirconia, then zirconium. For a set of mods that is primarily about adding new basic resources that tie into everything else, this mod doesn't add a new basic resource, and has maybe the narrowest use of all your mods. If you're somebody that uses almost no combinators, then the only things this mod changes are red/blue circuits, and you need a little bit for a few late game space buildings. It just doesn't feel well integrated. My proposed solution is to combine a few things.
One option would be to restructure silicon to better integrate with AAI's sand/glass. Maybe silicone could replace silica and be created by crushing glass, or glass could be renamed silicon and used for fiber optics and silicon wafers as well as its current uses. Maybe the mod could remove stone tablets entirely and use silicon in green circuits instead.
Another option would be to combine Zircon and Silicon. Zircon is ZrSiO4, after all. It would be a "ceramics" mod. This would give zircon more uses, both could be unrelated to stone, making stone just itself, sand, glass, bricks, and tablet, and zircon itself, zirconia, zirconium, silica, and silicone. An even 5 each. Instead of titanium ore, smelting zircon could give both zirconia and silica, which would be unique to have that much "byproduct". I would still maybe combine either zirconia/zirconium or silica/silicone, since neither has that many uses by themselves, but I think well integrated ceramics mod could make them feel like a valuable resource that has a variety of uses, rather than niche and disjointed.
I would also consider making cermet more different from low density structures. Perhaps replace zirconium and/or tungsten carbide with it and move it further up on the tech tree?
Actually, I could make an argument for cermet replacing tungsten entirely. That would definitely make zirconium feel like a fully-fledged resource that is required throughout the whole game. Zirconia/silicone/cermet could be unlocked over the course of late-red to late-green science. Titanium could maybe pick up a couple of the recipes that tungsten used to have. Then you're looking at zircon having 30-40 derivative recipes instead of 20, which makes it more like lead and copper. Cermet gets as many uses as heat shielding and low density structures, and is the only alloy in green science instead of showing up around the same time as them.
As much as I hope you'll integrate my ideas, I recognize that I'm just one guy. Stone having too many uses probably isn't an issue when playing without SE. Maybe adding KS2 would change everything I just said. As much as I'd like to have an additional ore or two that can only be found on other planets, that wouldn't work without SE. You probably just flat out disagree with me about some things. But since you're designing for many many different configurations, I thought it might be useful to hear an in-depth perspective for a specific configuration. I'm looking forward to seeing what your upcoming precious metals mod will have to offer. I'd love to see a mod from you someday adding some kind of new fluid resource, I think that could add a lot of variety. Thank you again for all of your work.
