Sidegrades instead of straight upgrades for player tools

Instead of tier 1-4 tool just getting better linearly (boring), I instead suggest sidegrades - specialized tools that player can choose depending on situation at hand!:

Example for mining drill types:

1. General drill
2. Speed drill (pro: mine fast con: consumes hydrogen)
3. Efficiency drill (pro: conserves limited vein con: mines slower)
4. Rares drill (pro: best at mining rare ores con: bad at mining common ores and stone)
5. Commons drill (pro: good at mining basic ores con: bad at mining rare ores)
6. Terraforming drill (pro: really fast at mining stone con: bad at everything else)

You can come up with more for the other tool types, its easy! Just needs balance to make it worth players time obtaining and swapping between them.

So end game player would have all the sidegrades in inventory and easily swap between them.

Decisionmaking is fun!

This way, earlier tools dont suddenly become useless once you unlock more!

Please also apply this philosophy to the rest of the game. Sidegrades are cooler than upgrades.

If you still desire upgrades, have these sidegrades exist for every tier of upgrades - so youd have tier 1 sidegrades, tier 2 sidegrades, and so on.