Tech Progression: R&D Track

i like the contract system, but being locked into it vs the whole discovery model of progression form the first one kind sucks, SO my suggestion is to add a secondary path for unlocking stuff.

basically a form of Research and development.

instead fo just building prerequisite parts, you could go looking for examples of what you want to build 'out in the wild' and deconstructing them will give you 'ideas' and points towards unlocking it, and after gettign so far maybe you have to tinker on a workbench to represent the experimentation stage to produce your prototype which then unlocks the full production version.

there could be stages to it like test type < experimental type < proto type < production type where each stage can be used but each stage is more efficient than the last and with a more complete range of what they can do (or maybe both reverse engineering and experimentaion both gives R&D poitns to unlock stuff, reverse engineering (deconstructing) form the wild may just give you massive amount sof points towards your current target)

maybe the survival kit is capable of producign a test type, or maybe the R&D 'bench' is a part of the survival kit (replacing the refining capability form SE1).

personally i'd really like an option that lets me reverse engineer or develop my own technology independently of the contracts if i wanted to, because then ti gives an alternate way of playing, more options is always a good thing (in my opinion)

signed

SpiritRetro