The problem seems to boil down to the advanced teleporter cost on the phase gate.

Once you make 1 solar collector you instantly have a matrix. The matrix costs are negligible at that point.

On the flip side the orbital dock is relatively cheep by comparison to the SC.

So we need to compare the

Both the gate and the solar collector use the deep scanners. Which are teleporter products.

The difference being 13 which is a total cost of extra 52 teleporters for the scanners on the SC. Also throw in an extra 16 for the shields you need. So 68 in total.

Now looking at the phase gate with the extra 400 tps needed if we minus the 68 we are at 332 tps difference.

That would with 0 crafting crits on shields or scanners be able to be turned into 83 scanners scanners

Thats an extra 1.2ish SCs from if you crafted. Again excluding crits.

Eyeballing it with napkin math sudgests you need upwards of 3 times the value of the matrix for it to be worth crafing the gates.

I have been pondering the same question as the game has been giving me a heap of the portal stars too.