Someone catch me up please

I stopped playing shortly after Odyssey launched, it was pretty buggy and the engineering grind for suits and weapons burned me out. I loosely followed this sub so I get bits of what's happening but I'm hoping for help with anything I may have missed.

I hear Odyssey is not as buggy, did they add any engineering mods, make the grind easier, new surface sites? Is all they did fix stability and terrain generation?

I also saw there are new AX weapons, are they any good? What about new modules? The last thing I remember was the G5 FSD that could be engineered twice, I'm wondering if there are new ship parts that are notable. If I got back into the game what should be my focus in order to catch up?

I saw stuff about a Salvation faction that had a spectacular fail and now the Thargoids are super pissed, are we in deep trouble or is all of that mess still dozens of jumps away from the bubble? I guess this is the lore that closes out the Odyssey era, are we expecting another expansion "soon?"

Thanks for any help, it's a daunting task to sort through info after so much time away from the pilot's seat.