But that’s not good game design.
We're just working with what FDEV gives us here, the idea was to use the game mechanics and assets they already developed (HUD, clip logic etc.) and just tweak them to get an overall better gameplay mechanic. I'd argue that being able to just spam probes at a planetoid while watching Netflix is equally bad as forcing the same player to wait for more probes.
But I hear you on the positive reward loop, unfortunately the game has been designed to reward you with either credits, mats or reputation and it's hard to come up with a different form of reward.