yeah I am a bit torn about these changes.
on one hand, I just recently finished my playthrough and felt like the end-game was a bit lackluster. There was nothing really special about Aquilo that did much different than Space Age. I just built a ship that would supply Aquilo with tons of iron/copper ore and calcite. I had to import the rest from other planets but mostly that solved the planet and it was just like normal. I was hoping for more interplay in the last planet and some more added complexity.
But at the same time, I felt that the matter conversion felt extremely nerfed to the point of it being useless. I wanted to be able to convert matter into planetary resources, but you can only make the planet specific resources on the source planet. Locking things like mineral water and rare metals to Nauvis, or tungsten to Vulcanus just felt restrictive and gave you little reason to use matter at all. I hope that these restrictions could be worked around with research. Possibly something where you unlock the ability to produce source planet materials on alternate locations for an additional cost. I like that in the base game, you could set up ships which would be able to produce blue chips in space for example (was not easy but was doable). Currently the only thing useful you can make from matter in space is stone, which is a bit lackluster and only lets you make up to red circuits.
I hope that with the technology being a post Aquilo tech, you can have more freedom about how to use it. I can understand that there needs to be some balance regarding this, as it could be used to trivialize interplanetary logistics besides Gleba. But you have already solved all the puzzles at this point, and already have all the interplanetary logistics in place. The rest of the changes are forcing you to produce ships capable of massive logistic shipments to Aquilo already, so I hardly feel like it would be gamebreaking at this stage.
So in summary, I am hoping with these changes come some adjustments which will open up the restrictions on matter conversion since its become so late game, and it would still allow Aquilo to play a more pivotal role within the progression.
edit: I looked at the update and I am not sure if the conversion for rare metals was recently unrestricted? I was on gleba testing other stuff and noticed I could convert to rare metals, will have to keep an eye on this in the future! I am hoping the other planet resources become unrestricted as well to give this late game tech more uses.
