So I'm looking at the recipes in FNEI and Hydrogen looks kind of funny with existing conventions. So the general convention seems to be 1 solid 10 Liquid = 100 Gas. So 100 steam to 500 Hydrogen feels like making a bunch of mass out of nowhere, and has weird interactions with other mods that follow the convention, such as Maraxis, where you end up with a weird way to generate water. This is mostly a nitpick since Hydrogen doesn't feel independently unbalanced as far as I've seen, but I recommend you set all recipes to use or make a fifth of the Hydregen, making it a bit denser but otherwhile leaving the Balance untouched and bringing it in line with convention.

Many of the reward recipes look like cheating because they make mass out of nothing. Doping and Ablatives in chemistry are useful and efficient but they don't generate mass. I would feel better if ammunition and fuel creation used H.plate and fewer raw resources to create a lot more output than the basic recipe. Also having recipes where you only get 99% of your H.plate back, would help. Or if a new set of thrusters get a lot more output from specialty or normal fuel since Doped in chemistry has to do with surviving extreme temperatures. Either of those changing would make a doped ablative space platform a really intriguing challenge rather than seeming like cheating.

Great Planet, I’m loving the challenge of getting everything to balance right and not explode. I hope it comes off as High praise that this is essentially nitpicks rather than something truly negative.

Thanks for the feedback!

The steam -> hydrogen recipe is 1000 steam to 500 hydrogen (with max prod it becomes 1:2, i.e. lossless). I think another mod is changing the recipe; maybe Muluna? Though I believe Muluna will stop changing gas recipes in an update soon.

You can think of the recipes that use activated hydrogen plates as shaving off tiny fragments; but because it spoils in only 1 minute, it's impossible to shave off enough to deplete it in so short a time. In effect, every recipe does give you (usually less than) 99% of your plate back, because it's always more spoiled. The mass is restored by the stabilization process.

The original versions of the ammo and thruster fuel/oxidizer recipes were basically what you describe, but it didn't really work. It required just as much infrastructure on platforms as the regular recipes, and the production bonus was never enough to justify the increased risk of explosions and the complexity of hydrogen plate logistics. And especially before you've researched advanced hydrogen metallization (which requires cryo science), plates are very expensive. However the ammo and thruster fuel/oxidizer recipes are the ones I've found hardest to balance and to playtest, and they're the most likely to change.

I'm looking at the high pressure thruster. It looks cool but I'm discouraged by it requiring imports from the planet. Do you think it would be fair for there to be an advanced recipe for hydraulic fluid using carbon? (and hydraulic plate not being planet locked, or potentially a loop where you can keep it going but cant make new plate) It returns some vanilla balance in making carbon asteroids a necessary part of the space platform supply chain.

With advanced hydrogen metallization (researched with cryo science) there is a more advanced recipe for high-pressure coolant (though it still requires imported hydraulic fluid, but much less) and and a more advanced recipe for hydrogen plate stabilization which can be made in space and is potentially lossless. But it's intended to invert the space platform mechanics a bit by requiring imports and very few asteroids; regular thrusters are still viable and high-pressure thrusters are not meant to be a direct upgrade.

One of Wube's main design goals for space platforms was that they be moving factories, not just transportation. Crucible's hydrogen plate processes make it possible to have a space platform productions chain depend on imported resources while still requiring sophisticated on-site manufacturing. If it didn't depend on imports it wouldn't be different enough from vanilla thrusters. I think inter-platform cargo drops also offer the flexibility to make it more workable.