Just stated playing yesterday. Just opened up The Collection.
Why can I slot some things into it and not others?
What good are schematics? I have a ton of them and can't seem to do anything with them except upgrade.
How do I use one to make a gun etc?
I have several actual weapons I can equip (on missions only why?) how do I get rid of the ones I don't want? There seems to be no way to access my actual inventory "at base".
im out of traps and don't seem to have materials to make more. Usually some rare material I don't have.
The collection book is for schematics you have duplicates of or don't want. Don't use the collection book until you're sure you don't want the schematic or person.
You craft weapons during the missions atm only. Your schematics will show up in the crafting menu. Later they'll be adding crafting from the base, but right now you cannot outside of a map/mission.
There are several uses for unwanted schematics. You can recycle, which gets XP of that type and refunds most XP you spent on it.
You can use it in transformations, which consumes the schematic, gives you XP refund (like recycle), and a random schematic of the transform category you selected. This also costs an additional resource (like people, rain drops, research points, manuals - depending on the transformation).
The last thing is the collection book. Once you slot into the collection book, they're permanently removed. You level up your collection book and you get some rewards. Some are good. Most are mediocre. I would put low priority on the collection book after you hit your first 500 v-buck reward. But I still generally slot into the book before recycling or transforming.
Traps shouldn't be that difficult to build. You can inspect the trap to see where individual crafting parts are found in their description.