The problem with this patch is it indicates that NQ fundamentally misunderstands their own game. They say they want a universe with a civilization created entirely by players. That requires.... players.
When I first started playing the game and was still learning everything, I crashed my ship. I crashed many times. If I crashed close to my base, I'd respawn and run to the ship or take my little starter speeder and repair it. If I was far, I'd simply have to run far or get a ride from someone. It was annoying, sure, but my own fault for crashing and a result of the learning curve. The only difficulty I faced was getting scrap (trivial), getting back to my ship (trivial if potentially time-consuming), and repairing (again, trivial though time consuming). I could build all of the elements, voxels, and scrap myself and only needed to build them when I wanted to add to the ship.
If I were starting the game now, what would I face?
1. Cannot build my own elements as industry is prohibitively expensive for new players so I'd have to buy both elements and honeycomb.
2. After 3 crashes my engines, adjustors, wings, etc are all broken. Since I can't craft them I have to go buy them again. After 5 the boxes break and again I have to go buy them. After every crash I'd need to buy a new core unit.
3. Since I'd have to buy all of my elements, experimenting with new ship designs becomes extremely difficult and expensive.
NQ has effectively just told new players they're going to have to invest months upon months of tedious, endless grinding just to start playing the game as it was intended (and advertised). If I'd just started playing the game now, I'd quit after seeing my elements permanently broken and realizing I need to grind out even more ore to sell just to be able to rebuild my ship. If you're a current player or a member of a giant org you can easily get back to where you were before and continue playing. New players are going to be forced out of the game. A game like this requires a minimum critical mass of players to generate enough content to attract new players. This patch just virtually eliminated the stream of new players.
I understand where NQ is coming from and why they made the changes they did. The problem is they did it in the worst possible way. They've mentioned adding multiple tiers/qualities of elements. Why not require schematics for T2+ and make them increasingly expensive as the tier increases? Keep T1 elements as they were; no up-front industry costs, no permanent destruction. New players can experiment with new ship designs and crash/repair endlessly while they learn the game. When they want bigger, better ships then they invest in the more expensive and life-limited higher-tier elements. With the game in its current post-patch state, I don't see it surviving until release. They've made it prohibitively difficult for new players and will likely never reach the critical mass of players necessary for the game to be successful.