Glad to hear you're interested, and I appreciate you sharing those thoughts!
That thread seems to have similar thoughts as mine. i.e. having complexity be the main cost of quality (versus the base game, where resource inefficiency is the main cost). Some of the notes are particularly relevant:
- "Production scrap, which needs to dealt with"
A variety of my recipes do have byproducts that need to be managed. I haven't introduced new items for this - I'm avoiding new items and entities whenever possible, in favor of special recipes - but this complexity does come into play.
- "Cooling requirements? Water as low tech, but later on fluoroketone?"
This touches on both recipe complexity - that is, needing more local tasks to complete a crafting chain - and logistics complexity, or the need to import special resources from elsewhere. I'm aiming for both, to differing degrees. Some planets lend themselves very well to adding additional components or fluids to a recipe, and sometimes adding a single item from another planet can open up numerous local production options in addition to a specialized recipe.
- High energy use
- Low crafting speed
- Larger foot print
These all interconnect, and can be very interesting in settings like Ceres. I'm not focused on any of them, though. Making a base bigger or making it cost more power can lead a player to try new types of infrastructure, but quality changes don't add new types of infrastructure, so this would just be a "difficulty tax".
