More varied, less uniform map - distinct terrain features. Currently there is very little difference if I build my base on brown soil, or on rocks, or anywhere. Mostly it's about root veggies spawning nearby (and I quickly start growing food indoors, so it loses significance). It would be more interesting if I had a choice: be close to rock quarry, or space orange tree grove, or grassland, or magical fairy blueshroom forest...
And that's just with the resources & tile types (=> art assets etc.) already in the game. Eventually, it would be cool to have:
- large-scale terrain features: dinosaur bones, crashed spaceship, waterfall, volcano, bottomless pit, ruins, craters, streams, ...
- lava (see also: volcano),
- water (related to streams and waterfalls) - maybe not too often (not even on every planet?), but it would be cool to have equipment pumping surface water, aqueducts and the like,
- irontrees: spiky! you can extract metal from them, but don't get too close, or they will puncture your spacesuit. The suit is self-healing, so the leak will not cause you to lose all O2, but there will be a significant hit - usually enough to run back to base,
- moss and other types of vegetation,
- ...
Ideally, the choice between uniform environment and large, pronounced biomes should be an option when starting the game (like day-night cycle). And it would be cool if I could get a quick preview of the map (partial, fuzzy and incomplete - not to spoil the fun of exploration) to decide where to plop down the lander for the first time.