The outpost mechanic is completely and utterly pointless

I'd say it's worse than pointless. The only reason I can see to use it (outside of XP farming) is to make the grind for research/crafting easier, but it even fails at that since you can buy/loot any resources you need for less than it takes to set up the outposts. It can't even make one of the other half-baked systems less of a pain to deal with.