Vas,
I vote yes to Proposition 26 (Hehe. Anyone?)! Metal you grab out of a mountain should be iron ORE.
Any steel that has been sitting around long enough to get buried under a mountain would have oxidized into a dust. Not "compacted". Plasteel, assuming it is based on real stuff, is a fiberglass/steel composite. Same issue occurs with steel, it'll oxidize and the fiberglass will deteriorate within a century or so to just a pile of hay-like dirty fibers.
There should still be scrap metal available to reuse and map-gen buildings/ruins to cannibalize; perhaps even busted up ships/shuttles/escape pods. Expanding on that, whenever pawns land via shuttlepods, maybe they should stay as physical objects that can be dismantled for metal and components.
Whoever says "Hur hur fun>Realism" offend me on a personal and intellectual level and, in my opinion, have no business making suggestions for a sci-fi survival simulation. It is a cop out, it is lazy, and it totally undermines the nature of the genre. A true travesty of a legacy gifted to us by the brilliantly creative minds of people such as the "Big Three".
Cheers!
Michael
Note: I didn't read the thread at all. . . Until after I posted. It would seem my arguments aren't new. But still valid. Consider this support to what other intelligent people have said.