Do you really think that something cheaper than Pigeon is feasible? Pigeon is already dirt-cheap, almost to the point where the hangar itself would be more expensive than the plane 
Eh, fair enough.. for some reason I really dislike the pigeon, but I really like the zeppelin. So I guess I wanted a zeppelin-lite as in even slower and less radar but as characterful, rather than a faster and less autonomy.
I had this picture of a biplane bush flying out of places, with the gal piloting it refuelling every day at the local town, slowly spending her allocation and keeping an eye in the sky for the main base. I don't know, it's hard to convey properly, but something more old and whacky looking than the pigeon. To me, the pigeon has no story. It's just a ~21st century plane that you rent and fly because you need to, without any effort since it's available from the start. It's too clean and proper for how scavenged and ramshackle everything else is, and a small, large range radar on a plane feels too advanced and specialized for something you can just buy on the cheap. The biplane (or biplane squadron? To explain a decent radar range on such a low tech platform. And that'd make a cool hangar picture) would be something funky that came out of the brainerz' mind after questioning a pilot on the "magic" of flying (so some effort needed and added value in capturing/interrogating the pilot) and then got cobbled together by the runts. I feel that'd fit better with the early steampunkish stage of the mod.
Anyhow, we're far from the main point of the post now, which was tech that feels like filler. The main critic on those from me is that there are so many things in the early game to research (my potential projects list is rather overwhelming, even though it is my.. 4th time at least through early game but I refuse to just read the ruleset to plan things, only for debugging or occasionally for one topic out of frustration) and brainerz are still rare/expensive.
In the list, I've got some techs that I know will yield something small (being able to make ammo for one more type of gun at the cost of one of my scavenged guns, an outfit that could be useful for a few of the gals or under certain circumstances, interrogations that you know you need to do at some point, etc.), but then you get lured by fancy sounding stuff which disappointingly doesn't give anything upon completion and may not even unlock any new research, so you are left puzzled as to what the point was beyond the pretty picture.
Sure, it is useful for the future, but maybe at the end of the article for those "intangible progress" topics, there could be a small hint as to what else it complements, so you have an idea where to go. This would alleviate some of the "lost in the tech forest" feeling and actually give a new kind of value to the project: They help you orient yourself. As it is, smart weapons and test flight do feel like filler: They don't add much more than flavor text, the "this will be useful for: X" without any hint of what else you need for that, and all the projects that depend on them could also just depend on their dependencies.
You already have something sort of to that extent for both my examples:
Smart Weapons: "A less ambitious, but more promising approach is putting Slave AIs into handheld weapons, getting a real-life auto-aim!" but I had to dig in the ruleset to figure out how to do that, since the other dependency for the pistol was not obvious. I was expecting a few "smart-X" research topics to pop-up immediately, as the brainerz try to wire slave AIs to various guns in typical slapping scavenged things together Piratez style. But it turns out, you have to start way lower tech with something that never grabbed my attention as a precursor to high tech guns before you get anything for small arms. Just changing it to "With some experience designing our own handheld weapons, a less ambitious but more promising approach would be putting Slave AIs into them, getting a real-life auto-aim!". It hasn't changed much, but now you have a hint that you should let the brainerz design their own guns (or which there aren't many choices early on, so finding the right one should be relatively fast). Then having unlocked the smartpistol, the other weapons that depend on it are much more obvious.
Similarly for the Test Flight: "I believe this unique experience will come in handy when designing advanced vessels", so if I were the brainer's commander I'd be like: "So what else do you need?! Just
tell me!". And a simple "Along with some looks at blueprints from 'em flghty crafts or more chattin' with engineers, I believe...". I'm also surprised to find out that Test Flight isn't required for more craft designs.
