I found it wasn’t a bother on regular planets but on extreme storm planets I had a hard time keeping it filled while trying to do the other tasks I was given, they kind of act like the straw that breaks the travellers back, they were the cherry on top that allowed the sentinels and weather to finally best me in the deadly dance of miney-shooty XD
Engaging combat is always going to be problematic in an infinitely open game. You always have a wide open field to run a single direction in and escape. Other games trap you in mazes of their own design and can focus the AI’s abilities around what they can expect to be in a room, you can place cover and give them interesting pathways to take and make it seem like they are closing in on you.
Proc Gen games can’t do this and it’s a problem I’ve found inherent with nearly all of them that are trying to also attain graphical fidelity beyond minecraft. Part of what makes gun play engaging in your standard FPS is the restrictions put on the player, you have to present them with scenarios where they have few options and need to think fast. With no mans sky you can just run away in every direction.
Desolation was an attempt to remedy this but they forgot to put engaging enemies in there with us 
I feel like I’m putting robots out of their misery rather than saving my own hide, those poor guys have been trapped in a ceiling light for centuries probably. You’r suffering will be over soon, lil lightbulb guy.
Long story to get to my point, I think layering stuff was the solution they’ve currently landed on.
Fighting sentinels, easy. Fighting a predator or a lummox you accidentally enraged, easy. Keeping on top of local hazards and what not. Easy.
All at once? With visual distortion and a BB gun for a multi tool? Suddenly I feel like the sim wants me dead and it hates that I exist.
Also if you run away from the boundary horrors and they choose not to teleport to you, have you noticed the speed they can move? They are FAST when they need to be. I thought a starship flew over my head XD
Time is only a loose concept in the sim, to the atlas all of this has happened in a nano second. Lets not forget the base Overseer too. He signed a contract with a later version of us, but works for us in the present. Also…
“since the overseer arrived, I have had a recurring dream, a nightmare that feels like a memory. Flesh merged with metal; a world of glass that blinks.”
Are they an agent of the Atlas? Or Her… …
The Mention of the Korvax being made flesh is from an old and ancient Gek First Spawn ritual, it was part of the process they used to enslave the Korvax. Not only did they take their will, but they robbed them of their appearance/culture, it’s classic colonial shit 101 XD
I actually built a base themed around this. Some redditors were making a themed system built with that era in mind,
https://www.reddit.com/r/NoMansSkyTheGame/comments/13yanea/first_spawn_battle_archive/
that was the original post that brought my attention to the system, it was what made me want to try and make a base using the base building app for first time.
I made two bases. One was a Amphitheatre for Vy’Keen poetry and music recital. The second was the Korvax conversion centre mentioned in the Above Collossal Archive.
Heres a link to the original post, there are some amazing bases built by the other creators that started the project, one even zaps you inside of a divergent cube and you need to solve puzzles to get out 
https://www.reddit.com/r/NoMansSkyTheGame/comments/13yanea/first_spawn_battle_archive/
this is a post about the puzzle box base, not sure about the other links but this definitely has glyph address, and all these bases are in that system
The Divergent puzzle cube seems like the kinda of mind/existence exploration that you enjoy Jubi so I think you will get a kick out of the experience.
Nanites are the games deus ex machina and essentially the lifeblood of the simulation, it’s almost as if it is what the universe is made of and it carries the will of the atlas. If the sim had wires with which to fire electrical signals and keep the show running, I think it would be the Nanites. They’re kinda like what George Lucas wanted midichlorians to be in a way, I guess.