You might want to take a look at the tarnished lithium preprocessing recipes. Using the maximum number of productivity modules at each step, 1 tarnished lithium plate can be turned into 4 fresh lithium plates, which can be allowed to tarnish again for unlimited lithium (at the cost of holmium plates and ammonia). The problem gets even worse with quality modules, legendary ones giving over 13 plates per tarnished plate.
I think the easiest way to fix this problem is to not allow productivity modules in these recipes. I'd say it's not too much of an issue since lithium is pretty cheap if you're decent at building asteroid harvester platforms. (Personally I over-engineered my harvester ship, so I may just chuck all my tarnished plates in the recycler anyways). But it still feels a little unnatural.

Hi there,

I have mixed feelings about changing this. I'm not totally against it being quite strong - especially as it costs holmium to maintain replenishing the plates. By the time legendary prod modules are involved, resource costs are somewhat of an afterthought anyway. While this does reduce the necessity to have a robust, high performing lithium-mining ship, the Aquilo belt is the only belt which must be navigated in order to reach the end game (so dealing with it is still mandatory)

I'm inclined to leave it as-is, as a nod to the fact that sometimes, spoilage can be a net benefit. (Which is probably a lesson already well and truly learned by this stage of an Only Gleba playthrough, but nonetheless...)

Thanks
Jack