Thank you.
I want to answer this and add this bit in too:
In my first post, I talked about a slow progression, I mentioned that this request around 'removing the grind' nearly always boils down to combat, and although I hadn't expected to hear that your Daughter was winging up to go kill Thargoids, I thought perhaps maybe massacre missions, it is still combat. Ok, hold that thought, quick diversion.
In a lot of RPG games, you do some basics, earn a skill point. These skill points enhance your abilities. You get a few of these under your belt, you're feeling good, a bit "I'm hard Bruce Lee" and you decide to venture into a new region and add to your body count. You discover an opponent that you cant beat and have no chance of beating until you unlock a certain point on the skill tree. So back you go, completing other tasks, possibly more mundane ones, unrelated to the one you have in mind, until you have that skill point unlocked, then you march off to claim your victory.
For me, enabling easier access to mats is handing you 30 skill points off the bat, in a game where YT get rich quick videos already handed you 30 other skill points. Maybe it isn't YT videos you have been watching, perhaps you have been apprenticing under the watchful eye of your Thargoid hating Father
The reason I included the remark about 'Playing the game', is, although some people come to this game with a very fixed idea of either what it is about or what they want to do in it, it is in fact not about one thing at all. It is certainly not centred around combat. It has plenty of chances to do combat, in a variety of ways but it is not solely a combat game.
So mixing up my games, we start in Elite, we have to work through a skill tree of sorts and I get it, you just want to go and kill that guy over there but you need to go do other stuf to earn the skill points. If all you can see is that opponent, then everything else looks like an obstruction. But if you take the time, explore what rewards are available from certain mission types, what trade loops can you find/create. You're playing the wider game.
The 3 basic components of the game, as indicated in the right hand panel are Combat, Trade and Exploration. If your focus is on combat, you're really only playing 1/3 of the game. In my game, I started with trade, I wanted to build up enough funds to get to the point where I could sweat over the decision between Krait and Python. I couldn't take the big 10-20m paying out missions, they were ranked high above me, so I mixed some trade with exploration. Exploring planets, finding geological sites, adding them to my Codex, oh, and look, if I shoot a few, I pick up some mats. I was playing the whole game. Even combat, because I couldn't take big Elite ranked trade missions and survive attacks, so I picked lesser ones that had less advanced enemies coming after me.
My meandering answer leads to this point, playing the game, this game, is about variety. If you only use one tool to build a house, it is going to feel like a long painful process. If you only add one more tool, you double the speed.