I’m assuming your being sarcastic about the “help aftershock modders” thing. Along with being unsure where you got your statistics for the above figure of the “game growing”.
But if realism is your lead direction. Here’s some suggestions.
remove crude sword recipe (banging chunks of steel on a wooden sword does not = weapon)
Remove electric fire starter recipe (wires and chunks of rigid steel does not = fire starter)
Remove stone chopper recipe (a flaking stone does not = knife)
Advanced metabolic system (like SCUMS, UI)
Add all the range of human diseases, make healing from wounds take ingame months for a few types (bullet, deep stab, deep laceration)
I’m sure you’d have fun cataloguing all the diseases of the human body in the game.
Add vaccinations for typhus, tetanus and other diseases.
Balance out item weights compared to quantity and volume.
Make mining accurate with volume
NPC’s act like separate AI controlled instances of your game UI.
That’s just a few “realism” ideas I had.