First of all I do apologize for the rudeness, I sometimes lose control of myself and it's no offense to you I'm sure you tried as hard as you could. I'll try to address all your questions but I may not know some of them due the fact that I haven't done everything.
1. You were complaining about the game, I irrationally deduced the skill of the player was at fault.
2. My strategy is one line of scatters in the front, 3 rows of ripples, and then add as many rows of scatters as you can to the back.
3. Honestly I don't know, I've never taken the time to calculate the actual numbers but it is difficult achieve maximum efficiency with just one plastainium factory.
4. It's odd but I just use it to my advantage, it confuses me as well...
5. I use aboooouuuttt... Maybe 15 in the front line... And another 20 in the back or more, depending on how much room there is.
6. Basically the mends are just weak they aren't the best and I'm currently trying to find ways that effectively use them.
Your other concerns:
1. If your power falters, immediately cut off anything you don't need. Improve your power production and then reattach everything. It's also good to have a large battery system so that you have the chance to fix the problem without disconnecting anything. Now if its all in the green and it just jumps up and down rapidly it's no cause for worry as it's just all the systems running at a different pace.
2. I personally didn't know you had to cool them down. I simply power'em up and they work fine for me. But thinking logically, only pump as much liquid into it as it can handle.
3. Depends on how effective your pumps are, if they produce more than your block needs than one input should be more than enough.
4. Odd wording, mainly due to strength, no it does not strengthen the maximum sheild resistance but it rather just makes two sheilds in one area. Simular to making a wall of 2 rows of large wall blocks.
5. I'll give you an example of my version, it wasn't fully refined so don't copy it completely but it's a good example. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wLcZJpAYWgEA5RM377FcSDVrM2zlhgMv/view?usp=drive...
6. Water tanks are basically containers. Nothing that complicated really, you can use them as a safety guard for your liquid fueled processes.
7. I have no idea, only the dev would know that answer, for now, just do whatever feels right.
Again I apologize for my rudeness. If you have any other questions I'll be happy to help.