I say this as someone who played from 0.6.3 to 0.8.1 Pre-alpha.
As bitter as it is to admit, but making the Omega-Kerfus craft more difficult is the right decision, since with its appearance you become a full-fledged hikkan.
Oh yeah, the old notebooks look unremarkable and can easily be confused with regular old books and ignored as trash (I remind you that lore or crafting recipes may be hidden in them). I suggest making them an unusual color, unlike books. Let's say bright red or yellow, dark green will also work.
And now with suggestions:
1. <<Location for the Pickaxe and Minerals hint>>
To build a OMEGA robot, you need quartz, but the only way to get it is access to a pickaxe and a cave.
Yes, you can find the pickaxe using the hint about the flooded safe in the lake, but it can be easily missed. I suggest adding a mining location and equipment next to the cave with notes about what minerals were mined there and how to find the pickaxe, like:
"Damn, Billy dropped his pickaxe in the lake last night while he was drunk... We tried to help him get it, but we NEVER found anything. It seems the pickaxe ended up at the very bottom, I hope he doesn't get fired for losing the pickaxe... It's really VERY expensive!"
Or.
"This cave is just a real uranium vein! The Swiss nuclear industry is just short of fragments of these crystals, and there's also a lot of coal and quartz here... I wonder why this place hasn't been discovered by others yet? We urgently need to extract the best samples of minerals and send them to management."
You can come up with the reason why they didn't come back yourself.
2. <<Structuring the crafting system>>.
Adding a lot of new recipes is of course very cool and good, but with the current crafting system it is quite difficult to experiment with this. I suggest adding a function to the workbench to separate "crafting" / "research", something like the system in the game "Abiotic Factor", but more physical, as always.
For example.
Having disassembled scrap metal on the workbench, we will add an "idea" in the branching of "crafting", from which other recipes will follow, for example, a trash can.
However, some recipes will not be reproduced without special books (such as Omega Kerfu(s/r) or Compressed Radioactive Material)
This is just my example, but in the future I would like to simplify crafting in terms of experiments and management.
3. <<Advanced everyday life at work>>.
I do not believe that the management that sent Dr. Kel will demand from him only reports on satellite hash codes as additional work.
You can also add more additional tasks from dr. Bao, which will alternate with hash codes.
For example:
"Daily task for today: 3 signals of level 3.
And also install new software for these satellites, CDs with the program have already been sent by drone:
Romeo
Tango
X-Ray".
I do not suggest complicating everyday life, but on the contrary, diversifying, this is just an example, you can come up with many other things.
That's all for now.
Good game, Dr. Nose.