Asteroids in orbit are absolutely necessary though. Your spaceship just wasn't up to snuff and could produce enough ammo to deal with them. You literally need a station hovering over each planet (especially once you deal with Calcite for furnaces). Don't touch red ammo or complex rockets tho, yellow...

Well, it's very easy to see that people are doing the whole quality process all wrong. It essentially requires: This is how it splits out (for each step and end of the line) Normal --> Normal Normal --> Uncommon/Rare/Epic/Legendary Uncommon --> Uncommon Rare --> Rare Epic --> Epic Legendary --> Lege...