More sophisitaced progression/research/science on survival

SE1's progression system is there, works and definitely is better than nothing but there is clearly unused potential that could've enhanced survival more and give the game more depth.

Im sure some of y'all played Astroneer. If you did, you definitely remember that research of new things was a big part of the game. If you didn't, you basically had to explore the planet; forest, caves, plains and other biomes/planets for research samples, you later put into a research chamber, that gave you bytes in return. Research sample rarity = research units (bytes) amount. You could later decide what you wanted to research with these bytes.

Even tho some inspiration doesn't hurt, we still could make it a bit different and better:

We could make it a bit more linear to eliminate content skipping (you could focus on collecting many bytes so you could research the best things in the tech tree right away) by still retaining the build first to unlock another mechanism. Both paired with ore & production progression would make this game have one of the best progression systems ever.

Another way I can see research/progression work:

-exploring wreckages, abandoned stations for hard drives that contain data, which could contain blueprints for separate blocks or/and the Astroneer byte system - hard drive - data points

-exploring ancient/lore locations for artifacts which contain rare blueprints of powerful blocks (similar to prototech from SE1) or/and contain lots of said data (research units)

-blueprints as an reward for the missions, buying blueprints - adding more need for doing the missions and adds more depth for economy