First thing first, I do acknowledge the need to slow down players progression overall. We are indeed going fast and that's not always for the better. But..
This is still making a paywall as a ladder. not only does it not achieves what it should do on the long terms, but it also creates a feeling of disconnection. There is nothing engaging in just mining for money. There is no point, no fun. It's a tedious process which cuts you from what you want to do: industry.
I'm not against gating schematics behind a Research and development process that would require actions and interaction from the player in order to discover new schematics. But if it consist of sending players to plunder planets of their resources and then send these resources in the void (selling to bots) for Quantas, that's stupid. It does not provide anything as a whole. I'm just wasting time and resources for in the end very little gain.
You guys NEED to implement a true and engaging process to unlock schematics. My proposed solution is Research and Development feature that would require a player to monitor elements of a ship (airfoil, atmo/space engine, atmo/space brakes, etc...) and one type at the time to "collect data". We can then imagine a contract between two players where one is putting the data collector on his ship to collect data for an other player that then would have to proceed these data through a dedicated interface in order to gain progress points that would lead to in the end with a few resources and a few quantas to unlocking schematics.
The idea of one schematics per machine is also stupid and while it might slow down progress in the short term in the long term it won't do nothing.
The main idea was needed, but the path chosen is bad, wrong and shortsighted. We need a really engaging and interesting way to unlock these schematics that does not require us to brainlessly mine for hours before sending all these resources in the void.