I agree with most of what you said, however it's only an issue if you already know the game very well. If all the "issues" you mentioned are fixed, it'll be much harder for new players to avoid dying. I really liked the fact that I could discover all how to solve issues (hunger, air, etc.) on my own without going to look for a tutorial / wiki online. The fact that you can't stack air tanks already prevents you from abusing it too much. When I die it's almost always because my suit randomly runs out of power while I'm very far from the base (without the lights being on or anything - it's a feature right?). When it happens, you can't even see how much you're hungry or how much air is remaining, it's really scary. Even if you'd the long range radar, it's not displayed anymore. I think the monsters / creatures will fix the issue of difficulty, forcing you to return to the base by night or use the med bay. If the difficulty level is increased, please let it be an option.
That's fair. I did only discover the possibility of stocking up on hearty meals after playing through the tutorial, and (if I remember correctly) it involved making a priority of researching food at the beginning. That said, I was definitely still a new player when I noticed these things (and probably even now). I don't think I died at any point during the tutorial or my initial run through the main game, or even came particularly close.
I did end up in the situation you describe - away from the base with no suit power - and that's probably the main "You done goofed" moment I experienced in the game. I think I made it back basically by virtue of not having been very far away at the time. Seeing the HUD disappear when unpowered is a really nice touch, and is probably more of a setback than I'd really expect under other circumstances.
Personally, I wouldn't be interested in a difficulty option so much as a few sliders for resource abundance and weather frequency (and creature population, if that's in the works). The default settings could be balanced so as to provide a gentle challenge to a new player, but after that you could set up a game where the main challenge was crafting greenhouses on a relatively barren planet, or a game where you had tons of resources within easy reach but had to contend with frequent lightning and sandstorms, or you could just whack everything on the most generous setting and build up a massive space mansion.