I think this idea has potential - expanding the number of ways you could find to make upgrades to your ship... basically in SCII, the only way to get a new weapon or ship upgrade that could be produced, was to buy it from the Melnorme. Several new levels of blasters, new lander improvements, batteries, etc. - all came from the Melnorme. But expanding on that idea could be fruitful because that's fun, but shouldn't be the ONLY way. Maybe you find an old precursor relic that can be copied and manufactured. Maybe a gift from a race you saved. Whatever the scenario, there are some rules that need to be in place about the improvements you find:
1) NO repetition, like, being able to find 20 similar precursor relics scattered across planets. Upgrades should be different and have different scenarios for acquiring them.
2) Must be meaningful and lore-based, so for example, you shouldn't just find a weapon sitting on a planet for no reason. Instead, follow a distress-call to a system, search each planet and find a planet with a downed ship on the surface - destroy the enemy that shot it down, scour the surface and find the remains, pop off the weapon and take it aboard, bring it back home and get the engineers to clone it.
3) Must NOT be stat-based improvements. Those are boring. I don't want a weapon discovery where I go through a ton of trouble, retrieval, research and implementation... to have my damage go up 5%. Omg, what a letdown. GalCiv III fell into this trap with their research line - people want game/strategy changing stuff! Not 10% more food production. So boring. I want the HELLBORE CANNON that heat-seeks upgrade from the Ion Cannon... not Ion cannon upgrading to Ion Cannon +3dmg. That sort of RPG nonsense has no place in Star Control.