Extra production steps and assembly lines ***ARE*** gameplay

After playing with the new production system, I have to say, I am disappointed.

The old production chain wasn't a chore. It created gameplay. Designing refineries, storage systems, conveyor networks, and automated assembly lines was meaningful and rewarding.

Instead of making the game poorer, I would argue not for just bringing back ingots - which made logistics, storage, and transportation more meaningful - but also expanding industrial production even further.

A mining outpost feeding a refinery, which supplies multiple factories like a steel mill for armored components, an electronics fabricator for producing high-end automation chips and nanites, or nuclear facilities producing fuel rods for reactors and railguns. Some of their waste combined with other resources could feed a chemical plant producing chemicals for healing, high-end batteries and maybe more efficient fuels. Interstellar travel could require a special manufactured material - not just a big chunk of power. Provided it's not just a free fast travel gimmick as it is now.

Building larger ships stops being a matter of feeding resources into a single smelter and instead becomes the culmination of an entire industrial ecosystem that you designed.

If you want to remove friction and drudgery, remove the atrocious repetitive contract system and replace it with actual colonization where valuable infrastructure and research is rewarded instead.