I am now in 28th month of campaign and plastasteel forgery is on. One mint is also working. And now, when I finally can buy sectoweed from black market, it turns out that medi supplies made with purchased sectoweed is less profitable than hellerium extraction...
But even if I had enough sectoweed to start farming, change to economy based on medi supplies still was insane. I did few moment ago some test runs with purchased sectoweed in 99J6b. Single base with 145 runts manufactoring medi supplies used 96 sectoweed in 50 hours. Thats 1,92/hour. And then I had four such bases, so I would need 7,68 sectoweed per hour to sustain my economy. Now, single farm is producing 240 sectoweed in 24 days, but you need 12 to start new farm, giving you 228 netto. That is 0,395/hour. 7,68/0,395 = 19,44 so I would need 20 farms to meet my hourly demand. In single base there is room for 8 farms, so 2 and half bases would need to be costructed and dedicated to farming sectoweed... And production of medi supplies after upgrading to 99J3 was stopped instatly because of lack of sectoweed, without waiting for farms... In my case it was almost instant game over.
And farming breaks immersion. Pirates do not sow, they pay the iron price.