>>725453045
Exactly. Bingo. On the money. You should do signals as a means to fund the rest of the game. Not use the rest of the game to fund signals. That is TOTALLY BACKWARDS. That said, I get the issue. This is like a lore based decision and not a mechanics based one. You inherit a shit hole you are meant do die in. Bao never expects you do do any work. Much less survive long enough to fix anything. That's part of the deal. It's narrative. Having a base that's operational to start would sabotage the underlying theme that you were sent here to suffer and die.
Also, just make a sacrifice save to shove everything in to a drone. Including the MRE barrel and everything not nailed down. Even the chairs and spare walls can be sold so long as you can [hold] them to shit click them in to the UAV. Get the MRE barrel. Sell it all. Go to the ATM and cash out your points. Then mail yourself the cash.
Then make a new save and start from there. This is my honest recommendation till Nose rethinks the early economy. Or just has something basic already fully upgraded like ping cooldown. As ping cooldown is THE upgrade to get in the triangulation system. Everything else is ignorable.