Clearer Tech Progress with More Player Control

The basic idea in the story campaign is good. You unlock blocks by doing missions, and having it explained in the game lore as the Colonization Authority AI controlling the access, is a nice touch. However, giving specific block unlocks as rewards for the specific missions has the downside that it takes away the freedom for the player to "choose his own path" as he writes the story he is playing.

You can give that freedom back while still keeping the overall scheme of tying the unlocks to missions:

1) Arrange the locked blocks into several separate and logical linear "tech paths". You can use the current grouping in the G-menu, or you can create a new one if it makes more sense. As long as there's some logical improvement of similar functionality as you progress through a particular path.

2) Assign point values to the different locked blocks. Lower values for the first-tier blocks, and then increasing values as you progress down a particular path. You can call them science points, research points, or something else.

3) Instead of rewarding the player with a specific block unlock for completing a mission, give him X amount of science points.

4) Let the player spend the science points to unlock blocks in any path as he chooses, if he has the required amount of points.

This keeps the overall scheme of "progress through missions" while giving more freedom to the player to choose how he wants to progress through the blocks.

And just to be clear and to avoid sidetracking: This suggestion is for the story campaign. The unlimited block access in the "classic survival" is fine.