I actually think we ought to be able to care more than we currently do, but I do agree that having more resource scarcity, as well as having some more impetus to explore beyond our starter planet & system i.e. not being able to kit out your exosuit to the max in the starter system (or planet, or my case). You're also right about those "You have found a signal from a distance star"showing that they scaled back the scope of how far waypoints could be placed on your map; though to the end I feel what we have now is miles better than if I had grabbed a waypoint "from deep within space" from one of the observatories, spent the effort flying there, only for it to be an abandoned facility with a blueprint I already had. Better to get that disappointment out of the way quickly on the same planet you're on. To that end, they should at least change the text displayed so that it reflects the new reality of observatories pointing out waypoints on-planet.
It's an easy fix. They should just change it to something you don't have, rather than something random.
And as above, the fuel situation would need to be changed. That goes for everything, not just your ship. Two elements fuel EVERYTHING. What are the other "products" for? Different cells to power your suit and tool...but you don't even need them, to the point where I sell them more than I actually use them. Your shields are a step in the right direction, because at least titanium is a bit more hard to come by than iron. And with iron you can't just fix your suit just like that. It requires some kind of production.
And the exploration of a planet is far too easy, when you can just liftoff and fly about for resources. It should be that you earn that right by walking on foot or finding a landing pad. Add that to the last part, you have a situation where you land and have to find the resources to just make the product. Trapped on a hostile planet having to find the right elements, has more drama than landing to pick up some plutonium.
You don't even need to change anything. Buildings just won't be there. Even if they couldn't touch the amount of resources, they can just reduce the yield on the mining tool. And you'd also have a choice of mining the hell out of something expensive or saving some of it's power to be able to mine resources to fuel the thing in the first place. It's own inbuilt leveler. Making warp cells is where this game really succeeds, because you usually have to create them and from other products. Imagine if it was just, "Create a hyper dive and use plutonium to fuel it", it would be far too easy. I even got to a point where I had too many warp cells and had to stop making them. If that had been plutonium I could have just thrown it away safe in the knowledge I could just pick some more up later.
It's simple. They didn't want people trapped on that first planet, so they gave them everything they needed. I get that, but they could have let people off the hook at the start and then have the game tighten up as they progressed (the more you can carry, the less you can mine). Then every planet doesn't have everything you'll ever need. Suit upgrades make me feel guilty, especially the time I was about to leave a planet and came across 4 in a couple of minutes
I've even ignored some out of sheer embarrassment.
And it must go without saying, having health, shields and life support is massively excessive. I have never died while on a planet...not even close. Any other game and that would be an arrogant boast, but here it's just common place. I even wonder how far I would need to jump from to die?
