So I know this has been discussed before often, but the "Realism" PRs in DDA are just so pointless.
It just feels so arbitrary and doesn't take gameplay into account. So one of the latest changes is smartphones don't give small lenses anymore. It makes sense really, a smartphone lens isn't anywhere near the same as a microscope lens (the other source), but then what is a small high quality lens used for? bow/pistol/rifle Scopes. Well I'm no scope expert but you just can't arbitrarily use two lenses and say they will work, you would need convex and a concave lens, but now good luck finding them.
So then it just goes to, what's the point. So now to make a bow scope you have to find some microscopes which are fairly rare.
Probably 90% of the recipes in DDA are completely unrealistic, like yeah make a pipe rifle out of a pipe, 2 pieces of scrap metal and a plank of wood, yup seems doable, especially with just a screwdriver and a hacksaw.
Now I'm not arguing to remove 90% of recipes or items, but more of plea that any "Realism" update actually look at the gameplay and mitigate changes. So for example the smart phone lens issue, mitigate that by altering the recipes that use the small high-quality lens, or provide an alternative source. Unless you want to change the gameplay to make it harder to build scopes.