Hi,

I might be missing something here but... from what I can see, to make mechanical science packs, you need plastic and to make plastic you need tech that is unlocked by mechanical science packs!

I know you give 50 plastic items by mining the space ship but that means that the player cannot do anything he wants with it and needs to be very specific with the techs he chooses so he can guarantee that he researches the full plastic tech tree before running out of plastic.

This is a very bad design mainly for 2 reasons:

1. A new player is not aware of this issue and suddenly will find himself stuck without plastic to complete the research to be able to make more plastic. Only solution, restart! Its still "early" game but a relaxed and new player, finding that after 1-2 hours of game, they need to restart.... its not the same as after 5 mins!!!

2. The breaks the sandbox effect of the game. The player should not be forced to follow these "100 initial steps". If he wants to go a different path and start immediately automating and creating some line of iron processing, he should be able to do it. It should not be forced a gameplay just because one resource is finite before unlocking, not 1, but a good bunch of different techs that gives him infinite access to that resource!

You can easily notice a pattern in how resources are used in science packs not only in vanilla but other conversion mods. A science pack only uses a specific resource if that resource is already available and is infinitly available. Until then, you dont use it! And if a new science increases the usage of a resource by a lot, it guarantees that in the previous science it gives you means of increasing that resource production or a meaning of unlocking that resource is immediately available, and the "immediately" is very important as in next 1 tech not the next 10-15 techs lost in the middle of 30-40 techs in the tree!

Something for you to think about while I go there and think if I want to restart or not....

You get all the buildings you need to make your own plastic in the starting area, and all the techs you need are pre-mechanical engineering. A big chunk of the climatology tech tree is dedicated to plastic production. The supply of plastic itself is just a bonus. You don't need that, so it doesn't matter what you spend it on.

If you need some guidance, the Discord might be a good place to get some help. You can share some more details and it might help narrow down exactly where the misconception is and get you past it.

I am a completely dumbass!!!

I totally forgot about all those buildings I already had and so I was wondering how would I be able to research and build them....

Thanks for the pointer.
And on that note, then now I suggest you exactly the opposite if possible... Dont give us plastic. If its possible, not sure anymore, to start without the 50 plastic, just dont give it. Might sound like a good help but it might not be that big of an help and actually be a distraction like it was in my case.

Alright, I think that may be a decent idea. It makes setting up the initial plastic production a more important milestone, since you can't progress into mechanical engineering at all without it. The resources represent salvaging the ship, but stuff like aluminum ingots is less of a big deal for that, since by the time you research aluminum, 20 ingots gets you nowhere.