You are allowed to use mods to adjust the game to your liking :) for example, after a quick search, I found craftable hard drives. There’s probably also ways to simply unlock all alternate recipes and same things for somersloops/mercer spheres.
I think it’s completely fine to do that :) it’s exploration the first time, the second time it’s not exploration anymore, might still be fun, but then it’s just because of the collecting, not because of the exploring.
Of course there’s a best solution… it’s whatever you end up with