Ye, having many materials would only make things harder maybe and possibly(or surely) lead to having some meta materials for every tier everyone uses while ignoring others.
Ive played factorio a little, but i have no clue about beacons system. I read a little and i dont things its that too bad? Maybe its worse than 1.0 system, idk…
Ill try to simulate or code system i explained in a post, maybe it wont be that bad