I think it was ever since Update 3, the ship is completely undamaged when you start a new world, rather than before it was pretty damaged and actually required repair. Is it weird that I miss having to fix the ship?

The new game welcome message still says the ship took a lot of damage, though, so obviously one or the other is incorrect- the message, or the ship being undamaged. Can this be verified and the error- whichever it is- corrected, so as to (re)establish story consistency?

... I also just noticed that the tools unlocked by the Tools research... can be accessed before the research, by hotkey- all except for Planning Mode.