Gates: Unfortunately, I haven't figured out how to unlock this mod's gate construction mechanic, so I cannot comment as to its quality with sureity. If you have experience with this system, please let me know.
That is for Terraforming and station construction mod. Just in case.
As you probably already feel, gate construction are not have-from-a-beginning thing. You have to earn it. There are quest to complete. It is starts, IIRC after level 40 if you travel far enough from a core. And, yeah, you can
fail it, which mean no gates, sorry. On the other hand, I won't say it is a hard quest. And yes, those are not a domain gates, quest will explain you, domain gates reviving is impossible. Those are an "astral gates" made by enlarging and re-purposing astral's ability to return back it's fighters. And that makes this technology very resource consuming. I mean it. Up to 1m for each gate per month. Off course, you can decrease it in many different ways summary almost to 100k, but the general idea - if you can construct and feed a pair of gates - you probably already "won" a game, so it won't make your life
much easier. Endgame money sinkhole. As most of the mod's content.
Is it lore-heresy? Probably it is, but not as much you described.
Is it overpower empire construction kit? Certainly it is. Is it a bad thing? Also, simple activation of "cramped quarters" makes stations far less attractive. It should be "by default" option. IMO.
making already broken things even more broken... did I mention you should only use this mod if you're okay with broken things being even more broken...?
I wouldn't say you have no basis to say so, but... Come on, dude! You can adjust almost anything in setting (I mean it, not just "on" and "off", you can choose prices, terraforming speed and etc. Default settings are made to be not-as-hard) to fit what you think is acceptable. And you can not use
most of the features in early and mid-game. And in a late game, you probably already a sector overpower, changing a one planet texture into another won't change anything.
P.S. You are doing a hard and very useful work here. God bless you.