You are right, my idea would screw up the core inventory signals. And most of the time can be handled by controlling input.
I have two situation in my game, where I wanted this:
One is what you said, on the same core
A item => B item
A => C
And I want both B and C items
Also, another core:
A => B
B => Money,
I have too much A, I need some B, and I want to convert the rest to money.
Offtopic, I wonder how different the trade random generator is between planets.
On Nauvis, I barely got anything useful.
On Fulgora, I have a great core generating more than two blue belt of scrap, and some extra concrete. Also some really useful cores to use up overproduction.
On Vulcanus, nothing useful for production, but two cores to slowly but surely generate money by an internal loop, with only initial input.
On Gleba, nothing really useful so far.