Survival Mode Feature Suggestions

1) Charge the player space credits in order to respawn.

1.1) If the player doesn't have the credits to respawn, they lose ownership of all their grids and the grids are given to a hostile faction so the player has to retake their own base.

1.2) The further away your respawn is, the more expensive it is. (reduce using respawn to teleport)

1.3) This also gives incentive to use the economy system.

2) Add realistic health and diseases

2.1) Zero-G atrophy: leads to decreased carry capacity, slower non-jetpack movement, faster oxygen consumption, blurry vision, or occasionally dropping hand held items if in zero-g environment for too long. The atrophy accumulates at a constant rate and effects are introduced on the player character at certain thresholds. Atrophy can be slowed by excercise in space, but not completely stopped. Only returning a gravity environment (artificial or planet) will reverse the atrophy accumulation.

2.2) Morale or mental health: mental health declines while in artificial environments, leading to visual and auditory hallucinations including text and numbers on screens becoming wavy, or changed to something incomprehensible like a bunch of symbol characters, false sounds including projectile fire, explosions, clang crashes, machine or thruster sounds that don't actually exist. Random fumbling of jetpack controls (force momentary direction change, acceleration, or toggle activation, etc the player didn't actually do but can recover from if paying attention). Can be slowed but not completely mitigated in space by being around plants, opening helmet (pressurized environment) using bedroom, kitchen, bathrooms etc to remind of normal life. Accumulates slowly, but can only be restored completely by returning to earthlike planets surface for a bit (vacation).

3) Add creatures with boss mechanics to planets

3.1) For instance, a giant sandworm on Pertam that will come and attack your base if it remains stationary for too long, and you either have to aggro and bait it away from your installation or kill it, but it only takes damage by shooting it in the mouth. This would make gameplay on pertram require mobile bases (think giant sand-crawlers), in the sky, or orbital platforms with only excursions to the surface.

3.2) Planets with life could have diseases the player contracts but are cured by collecting local plants or animal parts and making a medicine.

3.3) A planet could have a 'heat map' for player activity. If the player mines or has too big of a factory or facility, an event would occur and cause damage. Such as seismic activity causing earth quakes and volcanic eruptions that damages grids on the ground, or it could spawn endless waves of flying fauna or AI 'sentinels' (like No Mans Sky), to attack and divebomb the base until the activity quiets down. This would force the player to build small outposts and link them together with vehicle deliveries to 'fly under the radar'.

3.4) Alternatively, a planet could have a constant evenly dispersed threat that aggros on player installations, where the more efficient defense strategy would be a single large base with a tower defense like setup to funnel and kill the constant and numerous, but weak, hostile creatures.

3.5) Could have a planet with extreme weather that damages grids above ground level, except for brief windows where the weather clears, which is when you would have to launch to space from your underground base or land in them.

4) Pirate activity increases with the wealth of the player.

4.1) As the player gains wealth, credits, gold, etc, it increases a 'wealth score' for the player.

4.2) The higher the 'wealth score' the higher the pirate activity of npc ships attacking the player and their stations.

4.3) Pirate strength and intensity wouldn't scale at the same rate as the player, maybe at half or 75% so the player always has an increasing advantage over the pirates as they progress, but the overall cost of mitigating the pirates increases, requiring more automated industrial basis for producing ammunition, repairs, etc.

4.4) Maybe pirates only attack in space, for balance and a perk to being planetside?