Recent reviews by KillaGorilla

I want to like this game but. I would recommend it if it was early access, but it is not.
The game tries to be some sort of Frostpunk on Startopia but fails to deliver.

While the game has many flaws, I identified three core problems:
* The science events are driving the story but offer zero replayability. All decisions have a fixed outcome and some are catastophic. You are basically forced to save, try the options and reload.
An experienced science ship will fail at some event encounter just as a freshly recruited crew and there is no chance based outcome. Much room to improve.

* The stations crew hardships and goals in the story setting makes no sense.
People will go on a strike and not grow their food or repair the vessels hull because you left the solar system or stayed too long? People get upset because you collect humans in cryostasis? It's not well though through - they wanted some Frostpunk inspired problems but apparently drafted that part in a single monday morning meeting.

* Your station is soon "finished" and you have nothing to gain from expanding further.
At some point you can mostly sustain your station with alloys from peoples and farms waste (however that works) and there is no gain in expanding beyond that - limiting the gameplay experience drastically.
Whats missing is a goal to build towards - more stability buildings like entertainment, special research, better industry... It feels halfway and incomplete for something claiming it is a "city builder sim".

Minor problems include a completly misdesigned and unneccessary sector management part that only exists to annoy the player and giving you options to exploit the system. Instead of managing one station you basically manage every sector on it's own. You can have 2 happy sectors and one with people starving and striking. Makes no sense and only adds tedious micromanagement without additional depth. Example for destroying the game immersion: your people are unhappy because you rescued too many humans in stasis? Starve one sector and replace them while keeping them happy with propaganda buildings until your storage of survivors is empty. Your people will now be fine. Sounds logical?
Ship management is just plain backwards. It's open space - why will your cargo ships only take the direct route to everything, even through "space weather". Its amazing how you can create metal from plant waste, build drones and nuclear reactors on a "warp" capable ship but your ships will head on fly through space hazards into their early grave instead of steering a tiny bit more to the left.
The current accident rate is a problem and is already being addressed by the developers so I will not comment on that. But be ready to encounter more bugs - the game has plenty.

if you liked factorio you will like this :)