I really like the core mechanics of Arig and figuring out the new recipes. I like that you can't drop things at the start, and the starting area has a bunch of useful stuff such as robots, furnaces, steel etc. that really make the start easier.

But I feel the Arig cargo drops tech takes too much effort. Unless I am missing something, you either have to
1. Build a rocket silo starting with only the iron/copper ore and stone with basically no usage of the new recipes, or
2. Build up the industry on planet to generate 500 red, green and yellow science to research it on planet.

Both options feel rather tedious to me with no innovation, I just have to paste the blueprints from Nauvis and wait a bunch of time. Am I missing something here?

Compare the situation to e.g. Cerys, there you also have to build a rocket silo, but there you get steel, pipe and concrete from recycling, the blue chips have a different recipe and you start with red chips, and the electric engine units also involve a new method to generate the lubricants.