Thank you, I appreciate your candor and forthrightness.
I didn't realize the devs did not pay attention to these forums.
You've saved me a lot of effort, and I am glad for it.

Is this seriously how the board goes?

People's suggestions on easy-fix changes that make sense in the normal game, are replied to with: "it's called mods" ?

Why even have this board up?
Why not just mass reply to every post with, "make/find a mod for it"?

The delineation, imo, is "this an easy ...

Yes. I am aware you could just remove the entire "Ideas and Suggestions" forum and just replace it with a single sticky post: "Just mod it in yourself".

The fact is the vanilla game's inconsistent naming terms for circuits are inconsistent feels slightly jarring.
I imagine a high number of people ...

Yes. That is the post that inspired me to write this one.
However, that one is mostly discussions on why the weapon is bad and should be removed; I wanted to provide a viable replacement rather than removal, to address both the problem of:

There is an empty niche before rocket launchers are ...

Exactly. If I wanted a combat experience, I would play a combat strategy game.
This game is at core, about building an automated factory.
Yet, there are enemies in the game that grow stronger, attack, and military technology.
Why?

To provide another dimension of gameplay.
You must balance ...

That doesn't address lack of use for Pistol recipe, or the respawn freebie issue, or that the weapon doesn't retain use even before you face your first attack.

They're removing Iron/Steel axes in 0.17.
Even if melee attacks are retained, and their damage rate is brought up on par with the pistol (which is very unrealistic and counterintuitive), they're always going to be far less viable for personal survival than the pistol; they require your targets to ...

Suggestion:
+ Add cooling/cryo/cryonic/cryogenic technology

Reasoning:
+ Can add another "element" of damage
+ Can provide an additional research sub-tree with various applications
+ Can create an essential component in heat exchangers, fusion reactors, centrifuge, vehicles, and Processing Units ...

Suggestion
+ Enemy Composition Variety and Randomization
+ Enemy Type: Evolves very slowly, assaults extremely frequently, weak overall
+ Enemy Type: Evolves very slowly, assaults extremely rarely, but is incredibly deadly from the beginning
+ Enemy Type: Very strong, attacks extremely frequently ...

Suggestion:
+ Change Shotgun to Rifle with low fire rate, high damage
+ Rebalance SMG (or nest resistances) as needed to ensure its DPS does not surpass the Rifle against tanky targets.

Reasoning:
+ Shotgun is an unpopular weapon that requires manual aiming and quickly falls behind in damage ...

Suggestion:
+ Allow option for starting empty handed
+ Set option to Default "Off"

Reasoning:
+ It feels good to some people to start with absolutely nothing but your bare hands and work your way up into a megabase. Yes, you can put all your stuff in a wooden chest and shoot it, but this removes ...

Suggestion:
Eliminate pistol ammo and make it an unlimited ammo weapon.
Eliminate free Pistol + Ammo on spawn.
Scale damage output accordingly if needed.
Move Firearm Magazines behind Military 1.

Reasoning:
+ Gives pistol value as a backup sidearm throughout the game, even after SMG is discovered ...

First time poster. Hello.

Suggestion:
+ Rename Electronic Circuit -> Transistor
+ Rename Advanced Circuit -> Circuit
+ Rename Processing Unit -> Central Processing Unit

Reasoning:
+ Third tier of Circuits is called Processing Unit, a deviation from the norm set by the other two tiers.
+ The ...