as the game progresses, low-quality, cheap steel becomes harder to come by and, as a result, quantity producing crafting recipes such as caltrops, bullets, throwing knives, and bear traps increasingly lose cost savings until it's cheaper to just buy said bullets and utilities (unless you want a specific ammo type and/or poisoned utility), this has the effect that these recipies are almost not used at all.
lets say you want to craft 6p shotgun shells from your spent casings to save money, and have the prerequisite chemistry and mechanical skill, Qsteel steel plates on sale, that is for a base value of (250+7*Qsteel), a large shotgun mold has a static value of 80, a unit of TNT has a value of 50, and each empty shell has a value of 1, so 15. this produces 15 6p shells, in total equaling 600 base value. for any cost to be saved, Qsteel must < 56. If the initial cost of buying the blueprint is included, over crafting for the first five times, then Qsteel must be < 42. Even in post-beast foundry, you will struggle to find steel in quality under these numbers. leading you not to use this recipe in most cases past Depot A
Now, compare this with crafting adrenaline injectors. A syringe is 10 value, an adrenaline vial is 250 value, a crafted adrenaline injector is 300 value, and a constant saving of 40 (base) value is made when crafting. Both of these materials are widely available from any medical vendor.
My proposition to solve this problem is to introduce an item with a static cost, like adrenaline or syringes. Perhaps steel billets, aluminum, lead, or cast iron, or whatever, can be used as substitutes for high-quality steel in recipes that produce items that do not depend on the quality of the steel used. Maybe set it to the cost of 30q-35q (~450-500 value) steel, but make it use a higher mechanical skill to justify its saving (30-40 mech skill?). Of course, this substitute cannot be used in (melee) weapons or armor. This item should be sold by armorers and general venders much like how TNT and hexogen are sold.
