Exocraft seems, at first, quite promising, its elemental damage types, customizable craft and general smart appearance making for generally entertaining play. oh, being a low-level skrub is harrowing, sure, but past experace or a bit of common sense can carry you through a good 3-4 hours of fun, salvaging shipwrecks and avoiding blobs of murderous guardians, flitting between your beacon and the base as you progress.

and then you hit lvl 10, and the game's facade of fun comes crashing down. rising maintenance costs for your drones and damaged or destroyed parts will drain away any surplus funding you may have built up, you'll find buying new parts requires HOURS upon HOURS looking for Gems, and just to add insult to injury the fast-travel mechanic that once let you explore the far regions will be locked behind a cooldown timer- one about the same length as the time it takes your hard-earned minerals to be available to any shlub who happens along, if you don't have enough cargo space- and you likely won't, because again, parts become too expensive to buy regularly.

on top of that, all those larger parts you may have decided to save up for? don't bother, they offer no advantage over the small number of small parts.

I managed to stick it out to lvl 13, but I simple have no more interest in playing- it's become a chore, logging in during odd hours to avoid massive, literally deadly lag spikes, orbiting near the base waiting for shipwrecks to respawn and hoping I make enough to fix my drones up afterward.

If I was willing to sink actual money into it, I imagine I'd be sining a different tune, but as it stands the core game is too fundamentally broken to be worth spending even 3$ on, let alone the 20-30$ I'd need to actually fill my craft's part limit.

things that need to change in order for the game to be non-shit:
-Fast travel. either have free fast travel, or no fast travel. yanking away the ability to use it at level ten is just dumb and feels like one more way to say 'you've become invested now, so give us money to keep having fun', a Freemium tactic I happen to despise.

-Gems. these either need to be more common, or worth more individually. currently it costs 150 of these suckers to buy one single part- an amount you'd be lucky to accrue in FOUR HOURS of dedicated farming, let alone the 40-60 minute sessions most people are willing to spend on a webgame.

-maintenance costs: maintenance costs on drones are awful. to the point that fighting guardians for higher rewards is basically completely unprofitable unless you have 8+ of the things, which would require months and months of 6+ hour session every day, which 99% of people simply aren't going to commit to.

-craft maintenance: this is EVEN WORSE than drones- repairing parts costs absurd amounts of scratch, and the only way to do so is to fork over. there's no way no to, either- Guardains have Magic Aim that can't be dodged, and you have to close to and STAY IN their weapons range while your drones attack them, and just eat the damage.

the end result: exocraft give a strong start, but rather than keeping the momentum of player progress it trips over its own broken mechanics and faceplants right into unfun.

HOW TO FIX THIS:
Exocraft is quite promising, but the brokenness of several of its mechanics makes the bulk of the game- the part where you're neither an unstoppable max-level juggernaut or a newbie shlub- utterly intolerable.
first, before implementing anything else, you need to address the economy. reading past post this seems to have been something you (the devs) have struggled with, largely because you're coming at it from the wrong direction, setting prices then trying to get the currency droprates to match them. this never works, and is universally awful regardless of what game uses this method. what you need to do instead is set the droprate, THEN, based on the ratio THERE, set the prices. this is the only method by which even partially functional simulated economies can be made using RNG.

Next, you need to add ways for players to repair their things that do not represent a continuous drain on their pocketbook- a simple module that provides modest health regeneration would be quite sufficient.
on that note, providing means to avoid taking damage in the first place is a neccessity as well- energy shield modules or defense drones- perhaps even elementally tuned shields, of which only one element at a time could be active, requireing either a quick hand on the switch or careful engagement would be best? alternately, simply allowing players to operate like a sensible Carrier and stand off well outside weapons range and send in the drones would be equally effective.

if you want to restrict fast travel, do so by putting a cooldown or other cost on BEACONS, not the actual travel itself, to encourage adroit tactical use of the beacon and travel system. this will become especially important if any of the discussed plans for other locations become a reality.

Further, making your mines and shipwrecks consistent is something you need to do to avoid frustrating your players and to prevent higher-level players simply hoovering up all accessible low-level sites due to having a much higher profit margin than actually attempting the farther zones.

Shipwrecks should have very low crystal and gem rewards, but a fairly high chance of dropping basic exocraft parts- perfect for low-level players, or those who have just had large portions of their ship destroyed, but not as rewarding for higher-level players. lightly defended mines should have modest rewards, good for, say, those who have just gotten that third drone to take on any Guardian type, but again not as rewarding for higher-level players, and so on- this encourages higher-leveled players with larger ships to seek out more and more heavily defended mines to make the kinds of funds they need in reasonable timescales, creating not only a continued sense of challenge, but alleviating the issue of new players barely being able to make credits due to someone with 15-18+ drones swooping in and instantly mining out every site in their path.

Lastly, adding player agency to the RNG system would also help alleviate some issues with it, for example adding scanner modules that increase the chances of finding specific items- such as this-or-that part, or Gems, or large amounts of Crystals- would be much appreciated.

also I believe the calls for exocraft-mounted weapons have been made before, which combined with the above would greatly expand player choice and viable playstyles- something that is unequivocally a good thing for any sort of MMO-esk game.