I think you are heavily underestimating the challenge of starting a new colony effectively from nothing.
They have tools to build outposts, but they do not have an established infrastructure. Earth cities work the way they do because the infrastructure is already built and they're just constantly adding layers upon layers on top of it. Building a fresh colony is another matter entirely.
There is absolutely no way the arks and the Nexus carried enough tools and materials to build self-sufficient cities in a matter of days, weeks, or even months - there is simply not enough space on those vessels. They have to build up that infrastructure before they can even think about waking up tens of thousands of colonists, and having more planets with more varied resources speeds that along immensely, especially given how widely the resources available on each planet can vary (for example, Voede having massive water resources but little-to-no airable land and a lack of naturally occurring ore for construction).
It's not entirely necessary to have more than one planet - Eos could probably support them all handily, given enough development time - but people don't like waiting, a point they hammered home with the protesters and exiles. More planets, faster development, the sooner everyone can be woken up and put to work for further expansion. Pretty dead simple.
They have tools to build outposts, but they do not have an established infrastructure. Earth cities work the way they do because the infrastructure is already built and they're just constantly adding layers upon layers on top of it. Building a fresh colony is another matter entirely.
There is absolutely no way the arks and the Nexus carried enough tools and materials to build self-sufficient cities in a matter of days, weeks, or even months - there is simply not enough space on those vessels. They have to build up that infrastructure before they can even think about waking up tens of thousands of colonists, and having more planets with more varied resources speeds that along immensely, especially given how widely the resources available on each planet can vary (for example, Voede having massive water resources but little-to-no airable land and a lack of naturally occurring ore for construction).
It's not entirely necessary to have more than one planet - Eos could probably support them all handily, given enough development time - but people don't like waiting, a point they hammered home with the protesters and exiles. More planets, faster development, the sooner everyone can be woken up and put to work for further expansion. Pretty dead simple.
It's pretty straightforward to me. The game encourages investing in a few weapons and one armor set pretty heavily, so just pick the few guns and an armor set you like and just keep researching them whenever you hit a new level breakpoint. I personally suggest only building them once every other tier (i.e. from I to III, from VI to VIII, and so on) to conserve materials since the stat differences are very small.
Armor sets never change their stats, only their stat amounts, and they're all geared towards specific playstyles (uncoincidentally related to the available profiles), Heleus Defender set aside, so there is really no reason to switch armor sets unless you want to respec your character. Also, higher rank items are pretty much universally better than lower rank ones, so there's really no need for a comparison. Either you like the way the weapon works or you don't, and you shouldn't be switching armor pieces willy-nilly.
sigh.
