Lexyrus

So are you willing to engage in a hypothetical or do you just want to bash the devs for an executive decision they likely had no say in (the deadline)? To answer the actual question in the post... In an ideal scenario, I would link different types of data to different types of tech, mostly data about different materials going towards different vessel parts. What do volcanoes/geysers/atmospheres/rocks on far away planets have? Different ratios of various elements. What does that do to their physical properties? That's what you're there to find out. Why do we care? Better parts for more ships. Simple gameplay loop. So that also could tie into a mission system and tech tree that's a little more robust, too. You wouldn't have just "Science Points" you'd have (just off the top of my head) "Materials Research", "Fuel Research", "Aerodynamics Research", and so on, but each part could take just one of them, or 2 or 3 different types to encourage variety in the missions taken on by players. Show them more of the universe by putting the stuff they need out there. Now, will any of that be in 1.0? Probably not, Can a girl dream? Absolutely.