Providing an easy repository of generic materials for large-scale mods to draw upon was the idea, after all.
That's exactly what I was thinking with the plastics mod (after an extensive search revealed not one plastics mod in existence). BTW where on earth are the raws for your Foundry building, Catalyst?? I'm interested in the comment in the first post saying it needs a "bucket of salt water" to build.
@Deon: Just thought i'd touch based here to say go for it. I've prefixed everything so it should blend in easily. Reactions are prefixed "SYNTHMOD_" and substances are prefixed "CHEM_".
Now I'm mainly tweaking and bugfixing - the bug being I defined almost everything as derivatives of non-existant plants (this is my first modding effort with new materials), so you can make the stuff but it is not buyable at embark. I guess I need to redefine stuff as inorganic. (EDIT: this didn't help, i had inorganic version of ethanol working and it still wasn't buyable - so fat I just don't know how to get a custom liquid at embark/caravans without a working plant attached).
Also, the reagent amount in the first reaction should be changed from 150 to 750, for balance purposes. All amounts flow through the reactions, preserving the number from the first reagent. Right now, 1 unit of booze = 1 unit of plastic. Which is too generous. 750 means 5 units booze to 1 unit of plastic.
I'm currently trying to juggle between having the three PVC leather types be dyable, yet still usable as leather for armour. I'll probably just make them all types of cloth, leather armour is pretty archaic anyway if you're using PVC clothing. The other choice would be to create new materials and reactions for every color, but i really hate that sort of stuff. The best option may be to have all cloth, but add [STRUCTURAL_ELASTICITY_WOVEN_THREAD] to leather armour (or create a variant leather armour with this allowed, and a modern name)