Neutroamine

[Jstank]

I would love to have biom specific things that have to be traded for, but having 5 colonies at once, at least at the moment is a real drag on the hardware. I think he is probably going to clean up the way multiple bases are simulated before forcing more than one one colony at a time. 

Then if you want to trade the NPC for those items, then he would have to revamp the trading so your not just trading on a faction level, but on an individual colony level, which is also not in the game as of yet. I think these things are on the horizon.

[JupiterJaeden]

I agree with Lizardo here.
Neutroamine must be realistically manafacturable - otherwise, how do the traders get it? How does their source produce it? Clearly, it is possible. And with enough work and time, the player should be able to produce it. (Remember- the player's colonists can build STAR SHIPS. I think they can figure out a chemical).
So, with the fact that neutroamine is manafacturable out of the way, here is the real issue: Making trading non-obsolete by making something unrealistic is NOT good game design. Trading should have an independent, realistic, balanced reason it has worth. It shouldn't be propped up by making neutroamine unmanafacturable.

[Immortalits]

Before everything, I'm used to build and play with minibases, with preset number of colonists, NEVER recruiting new ones (disables random joining too), so I'm writing thing in this point of wiew.
Neutroamine should be craftable, but if it takes too much to create, then why the heck is it so damn cheap at the traders?
I mean simple medicine is worth around 20 silver, neutro is less than 10 silver, why would they realy ever sell it for that ammount if making medicine is so damn fast?
(I can have a big (200+) supply of herbs in a 2-3 years game, where I only use 4-8 hydroponics to grow them. Cloth requirement is realy nothing, crafting time for medicine is nothing, if neutroamine is hard to manufacture, all things that needs it should be much more expensive.
I found that if you're not building a super luxurious colony, than after deep drilling, you're flooding in resources, in a 2-3 year colony, I've just made floors from silver... after I got 5 large patches of chemfuel, mined out more than 20.000 units of it... that worth a crapload of silver, actually I found that it is better to store chemfuel, because it is slightly better spacewise, than silver... and constantly ordering exotic traders to be able to buy the only thing my colony needs... bodyparts, bionic bodyparts, a lot of them, and components, because it takes sooooo long to create them, it blocks my colony more than neutroamine even as it is craftable.
If Traders should be essential, than adjust prices and production time, after I buy 500 neutroamine from 3-4 traders, I dont even need traders, they sell crap, they have no silver, I can't even sell them all my crap, I'm even burning clothes just to be able to harvest cloth material when I made full clothing out of devilstrand for my colonists (I'm using 4-8).
If you find a single patch of plasteel with deep drilling, then you're fine, you no longer need it in a smaller colony.
In the end I made a game mode, where there is no raiding, because I found out that raid powerlvl is based on the welth of your colony... and because I cant spend all the plasteel for crafting, even creating ARTS from plasteel, (worth of 6000+ silver at trader - can't sell it without losing half of the silver, because they only has 2-4000), they came in the end in 10+ number with high end equipments, at least 3 of them with shield belts and super armors, not to mention the ranged weapons, I've finished the game and started a new, sinnce I can go out if I want to combat.
If you consider super large colonies, then trading is still crap, because then you need much more resources from trading OR you MUST go out to build more colonies to get more traders and to be able to harvest another map.
So considering all of these, making traders a money sing the best way to it is make larger items worth more, that you can't craft "realistically", like bodyparts, however, it would be better to be able to create everything, but for a lot of resources, and then ou can chose to spend maybe 5000 silver to buy a bodypart OR you can chose to create one, that costs a lot of resourcec, that you could otherwise sell for around 30-50% of the buying cost, but you send a lot of time instead to craft the thing.

[Sharajat]

Well my solution is definitely this mod: https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=26108.0

I feel like Boomrat/Boomalope farming is the sort of butt-clenching operation that definitely makes it understandable why people don't do it often.  Actually even with it installed I find myself stocking up on Neutroamine from traders just because having a large farm of boomalopes is worrying (and they don't overproduce).  I think it's a good enough mod to put in the base game. 

[dStreamline]

There is some point to this, especially given the fact that one eventually perform research to make things like "Antimatter Engines" or "Cryptosleep Pods" both of which are incredibly complex technologies far more advanced than simply manufacturing a chemical ingredient.

Granted, the process would probably have to be similar to component manufacturing, so that it isn't tooooo easy to accumulate.