Since english is not my main language and I may be using some technical words, some of them may be incorrect I feel that for beeing an sci-fi game, and starting in a ship electronic crafting is underwhelming, I havent been to tier 2 planets yet, so I dont know if this will change, but I have some ideas on how to improve this. first of all a new material would have to be introduced, silicon may be too common for propper balancing, but silicon is usally mixed with other much less common elements for high perfomance semiconductors, so balancing could be based on this, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor#Semiconductor_material, from here foward I'll just call this "Semiconductor material". now for the actual electronics crafting, it would be do through an intermediate item that I'll call "Electronic parts" that would represent diodes, transistors, and other electronic components, the crafting for it would be something like this pixels I suppose are some sort of polymer as it's used in 3d printing, so it would be used for the circuit board, copper would be for conductors, if multiple tiers of electronic components are implemented, silver and gold could substitute copper as they are better conductors. with all this said, the progresion would be based in the blueprints you have avalaible, so you could just start with a very few blueprints, and the main quest could be used to introduce this system early in a way that you have only a few spare electronic parts on the ship chest, and you are told to craft some basic device, some small signal transmiter for instance, that when placed changes your beaming location to some other point in the planet surface, this would also help explain the lack of technology early in the game, since those parts are all you have, and those materials are not common.
I like the idea. Silver and gold shouldn't be used to make armor and weapons since they are soft metals, but they are wonderful for electronics. Platinum should be used as well since it's even better than gold.
Yes, and other rare elements and minerals as well. It's part of the reason why there are businesses built around recycling them. Anyway, more on topic... I'm in favor of expanded electronics and automation in the game.
