I actually had zero issues with component crafting, I had one colonist hopped up on luciferium set to only craft and smith. She went from like 5 skill to 16 crafting in less than a year because I had her constantly crafting components.
You need to deep drill if you want to setup industry, deep drilling is extremely profitable, the amount of components and steel you have to put into it is only a quarter of the amount you will get out. The first thing you wanna do is setup on a medium or large steel vein, medium veins give around 5k-10k steel at the least, large ones give much much more. There's also the fact that you're going to be deconstructed all the drills and getting back most of what you put in initially once you dry out a vein.
And that's just one vein, the same also applies for plasteel since they can be found in the same size.
In all my games I never buy a component bench until I have a bunch of deep drills setup on a steel vein, you'll just end up starving yourself of steel very quickly.
You need to deep drill if you want to setup industry, deep drilling is extremely profitable, the amount of components and steel you have to put into it is only a quarter of the amount you will get out. The first thing you wanna do is setup on a medium or large steel vein, medium veins give around 5k-10k steel at the least, large ones give much much more. There's also the fact that you're going to be deconstructed all the drills and getting back most of what you put in initially once you dry out a vein.
And that's just one vein, the same also applies for plasteel since they can be found in the same size.
In all my games I never buy a component bench until I have a bunch of deep drills setup on a steel vein, you'll just end up starving yourself of steel very quickly.