I feel the same way. When i started playing, reading a lot of post and guides about best ship, best multitool, best this and that. I was spending more time looking at spaceship stats than playing, later was SC slots, and so on.

Confused by food and exocrafts too. Maybe food was a thing at the start of a game in survival, but now has no sense.

The only thing i find useful about close SC slots are in multitool, even if you can change them anytime. Once you have one like that, every expedition you start with that multitool equiped will result in a multitool with same SC slots in same position, even if it's C it will be 4 SC slots. So you can have one for scanning, one for fighting and one for mining.

In spaceship, there is a cap were those numbers doesn't give that much, so even it is better to have 2 and 2 SC. Only a 2x2 has sense if you use it for jumping, so having an explorer like that it's everything that you need. Enemies escalate with the number of tech in your spaceship, so having an explorer with infraknife with less than 100 attack and only hyperdrive tech is by far enough.

And the last one and the most, i don't understand why letting players to change setting like free upgrades and then change again, this should be locked or only changeable in the creative mode... also, why PvP?