I agree with everything trashman says more or less (but I distance myself from the uncivil tone; don't get yourself banned man).
It's rather absurd, this desire for games to be like one of those lab experiments where they have rats press a button to get heroin instantly; not all players want it to be all instant gratification; there should be waiting and challenge too. That other type of game is for wasting time on your phone while you wait for the bus. It's like there's some fundamental divide about two different purposes people play games for (heroin or challenge) and the designer tries to keep pandering to both.
Sneaking around and trying to plant the comm sniffer without getting caught is FUN. Clicking the salvage ability could make a little progress bar start like the comm relay. At the end of the progress bar, you get the normal salvage dialogue. Before you're salvaging a ship it should still 'belong' to its faction, and if an uptight faction catches you salving one of their ships, their might be legal consequences (depending on the faction)
With planetary surveys, maybe rather than a progress bar it should just increment the campaign a day or two while you're landed/in orbit.
I also think this should happen whenever you land at a planet and do something like trade, accept a mission, refit, etc. Sometimes you also just need to lay low for a while when you land at a planet, and wait for the fleets around that planet to go away.
But of course, starsector doesn't have a mechanic for this. It is something so basic, (the idea that doing things takes time), but after 5 years the game doesn't have it. This can be a little frustrating about starsector development; that it still doesn't have some of this basic stuff, yet new mechanics keep getting added before existing ones are solid and fully realized.