That’s a fair critique of Kenshi, yeah 😂 I have a soft spot for it because I started following it back in, like, 2011, when Chris was the sole dev and didn’t even want to do a Kickstarter for it. It’s up there with Grim Dawn amongst the greatest success stories of games I’ve backed (it’s quite a short list lol).
Star Sector is indeed a bit tough to get into, and I still don’t like actively piloting ships. This might be attributable to inputs: I’ve got a Kinesis Advantage II ergo keyboard, which is stupid comfortable for 14-hour stretches of typing, but means I have to remap every single key in every single game I want to start playing. What keeps me playing is the sheer amount of community-made content available, which adds a lot of replayability in the form of new ships, weapons, factions, and questlines. Also Nexerelin, which adds a lot of 4X elements, changes the gameplay significantly.
I was looking at Cosmoteer just recently, funnily enough! I was thinking about buying it, but my brain actually used the meme on me:
We have Cosmoteer at home
I’ve just pulled up the store page again, will probably watch some more recent Let’s Plays to get a better idea of the experience.
How about Avorion? I like what I’ve played, I just suck at building and haven’t put in the time to learn it any better, but it has heaps of good reviews.