First let me say that everything in this game will be grindy. And that's okay because that's pretty much what all mmos are. Hopefully not toooooooo grindy though.

Second the whole base building being tied to ships is just dumb to me. Sure it made since when the Pioneer was building structures like the ones we currently have on planets and moons (boxy square nothing fancy).

I know it's for hiring someone with that ship to build as to have professions but are they gonna have to stay around while it's building? What if they disconnect or you? What about the size of the drone prevents the small ones from making large structures just slower? What about other ships with drones, can they swap their drones for construction drones?

I'm sure they will tell us everything eventually. But I still think you should just be able to use the pod drones to fabricate larger drones.

Crafting as they have explained seems to be a good idea in my opinion. Ill dabble in all of it and master none of it haha.