It’s not annoying. It wasn’t explained that well I guess but it’s very easy to get into and play with the progression system.
The reason for having multiple resources for these is the same reason for having multiple resources in a tabletop game. It’s fun to balance what you do, risk reward with different modes of play.
Long term goal is finding samples on the map and extracting alive with someone that has carried them with you. If you die you drop them etc. This resource loop makes sense it is a whole secondary to the main missions and will net you upgrades in the end that are for your ship which means anyone that joins your squad.
The money you get from everything and is used for unlocking the “spells” and they are also gated by xp. This is also great and well thought out as the player will unlock toys in bursts and have time to learn them side by side with learning new mission types.
When you select a mission you get to choose an operation which is several missions in a row with increasing medal rewards for completing main objectives.
You can do side objectives and clear enemy sites for more rewards at the end.
All this is also balanced by the run having a timer which makes the enemy count increase steeply, so you have to balance if you want to complete more or less, if you want to safely extract, if you want more medals or money etc.
This creates a dynamic difficulty choices so the players can together calculate different risk reward scenarios based on what they want and how intense.
You can win big on a hard mission, but can’t extract unless you fail. It’s easy to get overwhelmed and run out of reinforces (extra lives)
Gosh it’s so much brilliant progression and gameplay choices put in here and it makes my game design brain gush. It’s so anti pay to win which is very refreshing, you get the suoercredits to unlock stuff in missions and in passes and it doesn’t give better stuff exactly, it gives different stuff, like the tf2 weapons or something like that, and it’s just different tools to finish jobs that needs to be done, which makes all players be able to contribute in their own way. It’s just very very smart.
