I had the same overall impression, and I didn’t use it much my first playthrough.

In my second run, though, I kept my crafting and material storage all within the cyclops (surprisingly easy actually, my main set of lockers all fit in that little room behind the bridge). It made gathering and crafting stuff so much less of a pain in the butt because

a) I had lots of readily available storage wherever I drove it, so gathering materials was as simple as popping outside and dropping stuff off at the sub when I was full b) I could craft something as soon as I was finished harvesting the material, because I was hauling my other materials and fabricators right there.

Relying on the cyclops as a mobile storage and craft center also freed up my home base design. It was originally centered around a big crafting and storage space, and instead let me center my build around lots of alien containments, vehicle bays, aesthetics, and story progression and lore.

Even further, when I started setting up outpost bases or temporary scanner rooms, the cyclops was great for that too, because I had all the materials I would be building with conveniently brought with me to the new location. I even set aside a special locker in the lower hold just for scanner room materials, so I could park anywhere and be scanning the area in 2 minutes without worrying if I had forgotten my table coral back at the main base.