It’s always been widely held that the UTS MM is overpowered, due mainly to it being so logistically simple to execute, since UTS only requires FE and more FE from SKF. Since SME and FS are both in the same industry your experts stack nicely and so it makes sense to put both in the same base with no complicated shipping. The output is incredibly light and so is essentially free to ship to the CX.
In the interests of balance, I’d admit that the UTS MM is a beneficial support to new players: it only requires a short chain of fairly cheap buildings and only pioneers and settlers, and there’s not a massive advantage given to players who can split the chain onto multiple bases. I get the desire to provide a MM which is straightforward and accessible for small players.
So I’d like to propose nerfing or removing the UTS MM and replacing it with a similarly-profitable MM on FLO. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that not a single one of these has yet been made deliberately, so the price can be chosen entirely based on MM balance. As an FS product which requires only SME inputs it’s not an anger-inducing disruption to force MM-farmers to reconfigure their chains to produce this instead, but by requiring both AL and FE (via STL) it adds logistical complexity to the chain, and because it is a heavier material it makes it a little harder to export to the MM. This change shouldn’t make the metallurgy MM much harder to get into, but should make it a lot harder to scale to the crazy levels we’ve seen on Vallis, encouraging players to get into something else as they grow.