Hello, Cairn4!
Recycling is currently underwhelming. When comparing the two different ways of getting metal:
- recycling requires 3 pieces of scrap and interacting with 2 machines (smelter and recycler),
- smelting requires 1 piece of ore and interacting with 1 machine - smelter.
In effect one spends 2 artifacts worth of progress to add a less efficient option for getting metal sheets (and it does nothing for beams). Other early game tech tree branches give you much more, often for less (1-2 artifacts needed).
What I imagine could help:
- other stuff to recycle, for example empty oxygen bottles - if I could recycle 2-3 empty O2 bottles back to metal, that would improve the attractiveness of both recycling AND making oxygen,
- more scrap metal on the map (for example grouped around “crash site” terrain features - lots of scrap, an artifact or two, not much trees or anything else…maybe a crater or a wreck in the middle),
- less ore - and I know that a big part of the game is gated by ore availability, but hear me out: the endgame is currently easy enough, and by limiting the ore amounts it would introduce some decisions, instead of “let’s make 10 metal beams to build one of everything that requires it and then hundreds of regular metal sheets forever, because there is enough ore for everything”; ore would be the only one used for beams, so scrap metal would be even more valuable…
- if lightning strikes damaged your base, then the damaged modules could be recycled back into metal.
Anyway, this is what I think. I like your game a lot, looking forward to more content! Take care!