Is it possible to learn an entire language and if so is it worth it? If those pillars are all over the planet there must be 1000s and then I guess millions of languages throughout the game? Is it worth it or mindless busy work?
I met 1 alien on the planet, could not really understand him but was.still able to trade anyway
The only serious use of knowing more of a language is when you're starting to get into stealing blueprints from factories. There's a whole game-chain of things to do for just that. There's a way of "cheating" while doing them without knowing the language, but it's all up to you which way you want to do it.
Anyway for factory blueprints, here's a list of steps what to do:
1. get a bunch of navigation data chips
2. find a station where the cartographer exchange it for "secure site" maps. If he only gives you "distress signal" or "alien sites" maps, go to another system's station
3. use the map chips to find factories, sometimes it will result in depot which are also useful but for other things (stealing some other good materials) and sometimes the map might take you back to a factory you've already been to or not even give you anything, then go to the next system
4. go the the factory and break down the door, you better have an upgraded boltcaster or other weapon that can take it down before the sentinels kill you, and have upgraded shield helps as well
5. go in to the console and solve the puzzle, sometimes it'll give you a random blueprint automatically (old version still some places), but most of the time you get the options to get units, nanites, or get a new blueprint
6. the blueprint now is a decision tree (two trees of blueprints in fact) and you get 2 tokens to use
And what are those blueprints good for? Well, the first tree has useful items and the second is for money making products. The highest paying modules you can produce sell for about 15 million.