Here's my actual feedback.
1.- The UI isn't as bad to me as it is for others. Feels unpolished, but definitely usable. It's not horrible nor unusable. However there is a lot of information, requirements, etc, that are missing. A lot of this would go well in the codex, so far the pilot's handbook for colonization is very barebones. I think you should let go of the approach of "letting players figure it out themselves" (wastes a lot of time, has to be said) and just put every piece of information in the handbook, as if it was a wiki page.
2.- Takes too long to build stations. You always have to strike a balance between realism, immersion and gameplay: Do you want players to be able to pop out an orbis station every hour? No. Not only does it pollute the galaxy and makes things move way too fast, it breaks immersion and makes the task feel less rewarding. You want it to feel challenging and be a time investment, otherwise it doesn't feel very good once you do complete it.
But for gameplay? Perhaps putting in 14 hours a day for 4 days to build a Coriolis isn't striking that balance either. I think the shopping list needs to be reduced, not by 99%, but by something. Specially considering the repetitiveness.
3.- Repetitiveness: The only way to build bases is by picking up a cutter, and going back and forth all day. I actually don't think stations would need a "time to complete" buff if you could complete it in multiple ways (Supply missions rather than mere trading, protecting the ship from pirates through scenarios similar to those of megaships or installations, donating some money, hiring NPC's to do a small percentage of the work for you, financing it through selling exploration/exobio data, etc...), but as it stands, literally the only way to engage with this is by going back and forth in a cutter or a type 9. Gets old quick and this contributes to why it feels like it takes way too long to complete a station, even though from the outside (Devs that look at the numbers, time to completion, etc... but without playing it) it looks fine. For the players it doesn't feel very fine.
4.- Money sink? Colonization shouldn't feel prohibitively expensive, and it is not. 25 million to start out is a fair price. But you don't really get the option to spend money to speed up the process. Of course you wouldn't want players to pop out a billion credits and voilá, your station is built. No gameplay there, boring and uninspiring. But you should have the option to spend some of that money that is completely useless otherwise in order to skip a portion of the grind. In a way that if that's all you do you'll go broke quickly, but if you just help yourself with a few hundred million now and then, it saves you from yet another 30 cutter trips back and forth.
5.- Content: This update has lots of content and is awesome besides the numbers and the lack of multiple ways to engage with it other than hauling. Being able to choose from so many options is great, placing stuff where you want it is great. Asteroid bases? It rocks, no pun intended plus the ice asteroid bases are amazing. I can see you adding more stuff and more options/models for Stations, surface ports/settlements, space installations, etc. in the future and I'm looking forward for that.
6.- Please fix the goddamn carriers issue.
7.- Yeah you've heard it a million times already, but it doesnt make it less true: Please just delete CMM composites from the list. It's like 50% of the work.
8.- More incentives to develop the system instead of moving on? Passive income and discounts are great. But it would be a lot more engaging if building more bases and more stations in your system actually made development easier and shorter. You obviously wanted to imitate that with the construction points system so that star systems weren't just 30 orbis stations in a row, that you do in fact need a supporting economy in the form of outposts or planetary settlements and installations and so on. But that is very artificial. I don't want it removed don't get me wrong, but it would be great if building a smaller installation was a way to reduce the costs of building the bigger ones too. I figure most players would then follow a pretty balanced approach to system building in a very organic way. Why start out with an orbis if you could reduce its costs by 70% by building a dozen smaller assets first throughout the week. It'd also feel like progress since building a settlement isn't as soul crushing as building a station.
