I'm struggling with the production of plates on this planet, I started with over 100 umcharged plates and putting all the unstables back into a riggored t2 machine isn't netting me really anything in terms of stable plates back.

I'm wondering if I'm missing something or if there is some conflict in production\mods happening here. As it stands some planets are locked behind a significant amount of this planets resources and even modest 10+ machine setups that is control limited to ensure the process doesn't overload isn't much production.

About how many science packs are you getting for each active plate? Since they're not consumed by the science, the faster the science assemblers are, the more packs you get out of each one. And because they spoil quickly, any time they spend not crafting (e.g. sitting idle on belts or in machines) is wasted.

I have them getting looped back into the same machine until it expires, probably 6-10 crafts but I'm not quite sure. I just know for one of the next planets I need 6000 packs (sans productivity from bio and modules on navius) and it looks like this is repeated for a number of future planets required for aquillo or post aquillo but used on aquillo resources. I thought we had found a solution to the expiration both on the plate end and making more, but the making more is already very slow and the design seems like the plates aren't intended to just disappear after they are made, but it seems to be happening.

After I have stabilized plates from production, my assumption would be that they wouldn't be consumed for crafts only change states. However, that isn't what is happening. Plates that are sent to get reprocessed after being used to charge fuel or research simply produce no products more often then not.

Perhaps the scale of this planet is intended to be larger then we've built, but I feel like it is already significantly larger then the other planets we've touched so far, for less science return. I know the RNG nature of getting the plates to begin with is partly the intention, but should it be possible to lose plates altogether after they are in the stabilized form?

The hydrogen plate cycle of stable -> active -> unstable -> stable is not meant to be lossless. But there is a technology you can unlock with cryogenic science that makes the process much more efficient (close to 99% lossless). The best way to improve the efficiency of the process before that is with rigor modules. Also higher-quality pressure forges, along with being faster, have more module slots. So you can fit 2 extra rigor modules in a rare pressure forge.

But the mod is also balanced to mostly vanilla. So it's balanced around only needing a few thousand high-pressure science packs to unlock the more efficient hydrogen plate stabilization process.

There's a mod setting called "Include post-Crucible changes", which was implemented largely for situations like this, where combinations of mods throw off the designed balance. You can change the setting so that you won't need high-pressure science for non-Crucible-specific technologies.

I think this is partly my fault for not looking ahead in the tree for a possible solution, but I guess in part the reason why I wouldn't look post aquilo is because I still need to research a bare min of 2-3 more planets with this planet packs by default (with this mod pack) so I wouldn't have likely considered that a viable solution in the short term.

We are rigoring processes that can be and focused on researching T3 promptly, but as you know in most of these cases legendary quality research is also locked behind aquilo.

Going to likely setup some up cycling in order to get all rare+ on the pressure forges to assist with production, but in the short term I've enabled the setting that doesn't force the research packs for other planets, but rather required for post aquilo challenges.

I will say it has been a fun and interesting challenge trying to deal with the processes to ensure its not explosive and had I not ran into an issue with all planets pack adding it by default to additional planetary discoveries I likely would not have had any problems with the design of the planet and have quite enjoyed trying to solve the challenge. I'm glad you have a solution already built in, but I suspect most players will play with default settings, is there any way to detect all planets or other semi conflicts and change the setting automatically?