Ideas for endgame balancing

[Hannu]

I am making of the mod which makes rockets more complex and realistic. Rocket parts and satellites also demand Bob's resources. I made couple of new parts (rocket engines, fuel tanks, satellite structures etc.) and chemicals (ammonia, dimethylhydrazine, ammoniumperchlorate etc.). However, there are not a natural way to include massive iron consumption in rocket, which is mostly made from aluminium, titanium and carbon fiber reinforced plastic. On the other hand I would like to have a large iron and steel smelting units with production of 1000 per minute or more.

I thought that it would be nice to have possibility to exchange iron and steel tools to alien artifacts. But I do not know is it even possible to change behavior of enemies by modding. Peacefulness should be defined by base instead of global value. Nearby bases which have been exposed to my pollution could be in state of war. They would not trade but attack me when in sight and attack against my buildings like now. But bases further away which have not had any contact to pollution or fights with me could be in peaceful state and I could go there and make a trade with some simple mechanism (by clicking a spawner, for example). Ratio could be couple of thousands of iron plates (refined to something more compact, for example to excavation tools because they seem to have underground tunnels) for one artifact. Artifacts could be added to some part of rocket recipe to make constant consumption rate.

But I suspect that it is impossible though modding. Other idea is that assembling machines would wear during use. They would get some damage points every time they make something and my construction robots would have to fix them and use steel tools. But it would be extremely annoying before I have automated construction and large enough consumption would feel too artificial.

One idea is that if it would be possible to make dockyard based on rocket silo. I could make ship parts with huge number of iron plates, steel, gears, engines etc. and and ships would go to lake and disappear like rockets. Unfortunately, it would be quite artificial to send unlimited number of expensive ships to small lakes.