I have ruined my fun of many games by activating cheat modes. I strictly avoid them now until I have felt I have 'completed' the game to my satisfaction.

Well. On vulcanus you can't directly produce legendary plates because fluid-only recipes don't support quality. I haven't gone through the articles maths properly yet, but I'd be interested to know if it's more efficient to have a full quality pipeline from miners through to end products or if it's better to start from vulcanus 'free' normal qual plates and build from there. I suspect vulcanus probably does win, but it'd be nice to be able to simulate that.