I just finished my first run through the game (solo) and I must say, Wow ! This is the best fun I had in SE ever.

I started raiding Mad Max style then ran across the various sites and looted them, then discovered the ship and the game suddenly became a construction project. I built a ship outside of the cave (at one of the med bases) by transporting what I needed and using merge blocks. Then went to orbit.

Good call giving us the bits and not the tech (unless I just missed the tech ;-) )

I think your tech restrictions are just what the game needed to make it fun. I much prefer stealing components to making them.

One lucky miss was that I didn't have to defend my own assets. This was just as well as SE bugs would sometimes cause my own guns to fire on friendly targets, so I always had to turn off turrets unless I was about to go into combat with the AI. I never wanted to leave a base with live guns to defend itself while I was away.

My advice for research is never allow refineries and assemblers, permanently. Find other ways of converting ores to components (shops, contacts) and you will be able to make some more great SE content. The thruster restrictions in this mod also seemed spot on.

It is possible to cheese bases with drills, but that a weakness of SE and I don't see how you can fix it.

May thanks for making this. I'm looking forward to going back in and trying to kill some GCorp bases this time.

Assemblers are fine since you can salvage excess items you find to break them down and construct other things, you don't always find the stuff you need without investing in a risky raid or waiting for the right convoy. it would only slow down progress unnaturally