Interesting question considering how ODY breaks certain farming paths for Engineering mats...
Again this is ship engineering only. Feature of ED:H.
TL;DR:
What we have now is not a slot machine so my Stockholm Syndrome demands I advocate for it. Its actually fine, if you know the tricks.
The current top methods for gathering materials are fast to the point where any additional gathering paths would need to be extremely generous or completely passive as to not compete with dedicated game play regarding them. "Legitimate" farming methods must be buffed and made consistent before any changes/fixes/nerfs are made.
The disconnected nature of the effort to gather mats from the upgrade activity is a POSITIVE aspect of the current process of building a ship and should not be distracted by missions. Some players hate missions.
Material availability/Time
You, the game designer, need to decide what the purpose of the material system is. The purpose of the engineering system seems to be to customize and buff stats on ships. Progression. The way I play the game, these upgrades are not optional. I enjoyed (Last time I messed with builds was ODY release) theory/math crafting ships so replicating that in game means building to "spec". No middle ground.
The cost (products of a activity which consumes time)(not skill progression) is there to make the player value the upgrades. Because gathering the currency of the upgrades is a completely independent work flow to anything else in the game, I have to go out of my way to do it, and do it in bulk until full. As much as I hate going out of my way, the upgrades are worth it because they are predictable. It is much preferable to the ODY situation where you can only store materials for a few upgrades at a time, constantly have to manage the useful items against junk, or having to do a specific mission as part of getting the upgrade. I can build new ships quickly to spec and farm when I want, to my own standards when there is no time pressure created by desire or in game event. "Want" is a significant physiological word vs "Need" to farm because I want something. What we have now in EDH engineering is not that bad, because its very formulaic and predictable in this way.
I anticipate most players will not see it this way because they have a different relationship with the upgrades themselves OR do not have the knowledge of the farming methods enabling such efficiency. Data can be mass produced and traded. Raw can be mass harvested and traded. Some HGE are easy to get, some its not worth trying and are traded, and some are worth trying to find if you need enough. If the player don't know all this, they probably hate the system. This is the real issue with EDH engineering. Improvements to lessen this knowledge barrier could be considered, but considering the nature of the current processes its going to need new, very generous rewards.
I estimate I can fill 3 stacks of grade 4 raw mats to trade from in less than an hour using crashed anacondas, trade and then repeat until SATED. I also get data there and don't have to collect it separately. I don't know what the speed of dedicated data collection from Jameson Crash Site is, but it is fast to the point where all other collection methods are irrelevant. (I still have that wake scanner for wakes at distribution signal sources, waste of time.) Fdev knows this from the CGs involving data turn in. Nerfing this will only illicit scorn but my ships are done so... Fdev needs to understand what they are dealing with. The exploits themselves are part of the joy of grinding.
New Gathering methods
All the same, I urge caution. The more trading and alternative gathering methods you add: the less it becomes "gameplay diversification encouragement" and more just generic friction. I implore you to see the danger of the more mechanisms you add to attain the engineering currency, the greater likelihood that one of them is going to short circuit the others, become the best effective way to farm that material, and encourage people into game play they do not like. Whining and max/mining will ensue, and all Fdev will have succeed in doing is adding gameplay loops that go unused: unless they are passive. Yes, as long as the engineering currency (whatever its reworked to) is trickled in passively, then it won't supplant dedicating farming methods, or annoy min maxers and then encourage engagement from even the most casual who have not bothered with engineering before now. This assumes/contingent that there still is a dedicated farming method.
Since some sort of friction is the design goal, Fdev could make engineering cost credits or some other universal fungible resource. Obviously I don't expect this, but you have to acknowledge the endpoint in the logic if the current system is to be simplified. I don't advocate for that as it does remove the flavor of the activity, but the belief suspension needed to accept that the only way to get imperial shielding is by finding destroyed imperial ships must be addressed. Trade rates and inputs could be better.
The other option being floated is requiring missions on upgrade as some or part of its cost but I dislike that plan because it couples the time to work on the ship and paying for the upgrade. It slows the procedure of ship building way too much. This is unnecessary and I like the current system because you can "grind ahead" when you feel like it. I also hate that plan because it devalues my inventory. Being honest. I also do not like feeling forced to go on missions. They are RNG and only fun when edge-cased or exploited. (having to afk in supercuise because of the local geography and RNG is not compelling gameplay)
RNG on improvements:
There is no RNG in the upgrade system the way I interact with it. The ship is built to spec and I have to spend some hours replacing the mats. The specific number of hours is more affected by the RNG in the gathering method then the specific number of roles applications needed on the upgrades. The rolls never vary by more than 5 applications anyway and thats only one HGE. (The variance is written off.)
What you do need to consider revisiting from the old system is rolling for random buffs from terrible version one iteration of engineering. Optimal mass for example. These buffs could be rolled for a as a separate blueprint and have a chance to add one of these modifiers. The modifiers themselves (unlike the old system) should be consistent, so there is still an attainable known specification, but how many times you need to roll the modifier category is random. The game play value of this is speculative and some players are allergic to this type of RNG, so maybe ignore this section or implement it without the slot machine.
Edit: The stats on the upgrades themselves all have known maxes and any discussion surrounding them has nothing to do with the engineering system and should be reserved for its own effort re: overall ship balancing. Again, I don't see ship engineering as optional or issues with modification variety being a legitimate reason to touch the stats. Only game play concerns should have that authority.
What we have now is not a slot machine so my Stockholm Syndrome demands I advocate for it. Its actually fine, if you know the tricks.
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