First of all, thanks for that huge useful topic !
That game is a pretty old game I made like 2 years ago, so I may not remember everything I have done on it, sorry.
I agree that the game feels unfinished, it may be like that because I worked on it like 2 months non-stop before having a bit of a burn-out, so the end of the game was a bit rushed up. That may be the reasons why some crashes occurs sometimes.
I started a while ago to make a V2 of this game, but getting back in it's complex codebase (it's a game made from scratch without any game engine, it uses a framework) needs a lot of motivation and all.
For your improvement idea about the CTRL key to skip dialogues, I'm noting that for the potential v2 of the game, if I have motivation and time to finish it, but thanks for the idea !
After the bomb dropped, the goal is to explore to find resources and food, and to go further into the story. The RFID item is just an utility item used to open some locked doors and it's not useful elsewhere. And no, you can't ration out the rations, as I know 😂.
For the crash, I investigated in the game's code, and it seems to be a problem with the way the engine handles items modifications (from microcontroller => programmed microcontroller) after loading from save. I will try to release a fixed version soon (maybe the v2 too ?). The fact that you use wine to run the game (glad it works on Linux with wine btw !) should not cause problems.
For the ground plates (they are used to increase the shelter protection level, that's useful for the end of the game (no spoiling !)), you should be able to equip and place them on ground in the shelter. You can't stack them on the same tile though.
For the save data, on Windows, they are in %appdata%/Shelter. "settings.sav" contains your settings (fullscreen, music/sfx volumes, etc.) and your main save file is "saves/0.sav". For good measure, copy the entire Shelter directory to the target PC at the same location. As you are apparently using Wine, the %appdata% location on Linux seems to be at: "~/.wine/drive_c/users/<your-username>/Application Data/" so the Shelter directory must be at: "~/.wine/drive_c/users/<your-username>/Application Data/Shelter".
Thanks again for taking your time to write this topic and review ! And sorry for the delay, we may have different timezones (I am French).
PS: The Outlands is the next area unlocked after you made the Peg microcontroller event thing.
PS2 (no, not the console): If I could create a save point at any point in life, it would be right before doing a life-changing choice (I don't know what choice but yes), in case it goes wrong, so I can rollback ! And with my own file format, so I can edit my life afterwards hehe.