EDIT: I am so stupid! The system is working fine on newly created accounts. Ok thread can be locked...
the player.config looks alright. Can you post the titaniumbar .recipe and a non-functional item's recipe?
No need to worry now, I found that one had to make a new character for the tier system to kick in... God I feel so stupid now
There is a workaround for every tier but 1. If you recraft the starmap upgrade then it will re-add the recipes for earlier tiers. Like if you craft the first one, you get all the tier2 stuff again.