I also found scientific to be difficult... at first. Expansive gets extra claims and reduced steel requirements. Robotic has reduced resource needs, just power, aluminum, iron, steel, and electronics. Scavenger needs carbon instead of steel, which removes the need for some claims for steel mills.

Scientific is a little different. They get to skip some mining steps as their buildings can mine for their own needs. For instance, a glass furnace can mine its own silicon. However, it still need oxygen to be delivered, a step that might be what confuses some people. Many buildings can't rely on just 1 resource, so this perk does seem limited. Another perk that scientific has is it can research faster, which requires some extra attention and focus to pull off as it is easy to ignore research. Also, it isn't any cheaper to do the research, so like everyone else, money and resources will hold the scientific HQ back in this regard.