which has NEVER been a problem in need of solving.The devs made sure for the players to be unable to level up to the maximum possible level (from a few million exp to billions of exp ) so the alternative was to add recipes and force looting which means forcing the players to go outside their bases.
People explored in A17, people are already FAR more likely to explore in A18, due to the loot-only schematics and tier 3 item parts