Well just looking at the game itself it might seem to be obvious. Yet I did look at the plugin API a little bit. Asuming the API is somehow representing the game strukture the "blocks" and recipes don't really hint towards that. Granted it is always possible that part of the api was just a "quick & dirty" hack to get it going. Which could very much be true as the API doesn't have a way to define recips from there. Guess once that feature would be implemented a cleanup in this area of the API is mandatory.
I don't really get that point, isn't it common in other games to just have a "creative mode" for those who just want to do building?
the game is in EA, as you also stated. That means several features aren´t available yet or limited. The real reasons why there are no detailled recipes yet need to be explained by Red51 but i imagine that part of that is because we are lacking of the material yet (more trees, other rock types, etc.). And another is that it is currently very difficult and lengthy to move to other biomes. It is unrealistic to go to all available biomes with just a row boat or a motor boat, not knowing where the biome is, having no map, etc. Yes, you can go exploring but to build with all the materials you would need to go hunting for material for ages just to find sufficicent trees for the build you want to do.
More updates will introduce vehicles, ships, map, trains, etc. That will make it a lot easier. And also more natural textures of course. For some textures there isn´t any material implemented yet. Neither are detailled recipes. So it makes sense to connect the introduction of these detailled recipes to the introduction of the other mentioned stuff.
For now these are just placeholders. Or do you think to produce 1 glass pane you will need 1 sheet of metal? ![wink ;)](https://www.rising-world.net/images/smilies/wink.png)
Give it some more time. What you see now is just the current state, not the final outcome.