I feel like there could be a really cool gameplay loop if Vault stuff unlocked mods and automation by making knowledge stars, then stuff like Vault Gear and skill points were made by crafting a small amount of vault resources with increasingly massive amounts of farmable resources. Like if the skill point recipe was a skill frame surrounded by 3x compressed blocks or something. Or if vault ingots were mostly made out of compacted iron/copper/gold/whatever.
Right now, vault gear and skills are made with vault stuff. Mods are unlocked with vault stuff. The stuff you need to craft to actually USE the mods is made with vault stuff. So the stuff you are farming is just to fulfill the arbitrary vault podium requirements.
The vault portal could just be constantly open and all but a handful of mods would serve no purpose.