The idea is great and its almost there but for some reason no matter what i do to the settings im at 45-55 fps at the start and about 45mins to an hr later im practically locked at 20fps untill i save and restart the game. This game needs a ton of work, at this moment i cannot recommend it to anyone unless u can stand these issues.. It's fun no doubt there, but the fps drops and the gfxs getting all blurry. no matter if im on a 1080p or 1440p same exact thing happens no matter what i do to the settings. mind you nasa isnt asking to borrow my computer or anything but it shouldnt be doing this bad.

About 75 hours in and I am loving this game. It hits on several levels for me:

+ Cruising around on my boat is really relaxing. Great music, wind and waves, gentle rocking of the sea. Mixed of course with heavy storms and stopping to kill some sharks for those rare mats! I love that my base is basically an old fishing trawler, not fancy, not perfect, but homey and reliable. Wallowing in the wave troughs reminds me of actually being on the sea during bad weather.
- Could use a few less storms. Seems like the storms/sunny ratio is off a little bit.

+ Cables/hoses are pretty well done. The graphics for showing movement of electric/water/diesel, etc., is well done. You can see from a distance what is happening, and each type of hose has its own color pattern which makes it pretty cool. The ability to craft extenders on the fly is a great tool. Makes placing long electric runs to power bases a little simpler.
- Occasional janky graphics with hoses jumping around. Usually fixed by disconnecting and reconnecting.

+ Gameplay and story are good, not great. Sometimes I have no idea what to do or how, but that's pretty consistent with the story/mission. As I am wandering around I definitely wonder "what the hell happened to everything". And seeing all my poor broken robot brethren lying around...so sad. Oh well, time to gather their mats!!
- It would be nice to have a way to retrieve or review the voiceover messages. Sometimes there seems to be good info in there but I can't remember after 5 minutes what she told me. :)

+ Bases and exploration: Definitely gives me a sense of aloneness in the world. Searching around to find a way into a base while being attacked by roller bots accompanied by dramatic music...nice!
- Definitely some repetition in bases. Exploring some bases gives me that feeing of "been here before". There are some small variations though and the Devs recently added some new types of areas.

+ As a lifetime diver I have been underwater in every kind of environment. The underwater exploration here gives me just the right combo of anxiety and satisfaction. It's dark, it's eerie, it's a hostile foreign environment...cool! Stringing down a power line from the boat, figuring out the layout to explore, all while having limited visibility and a bit of that primeval fear.
- Devs, it would be nice to have a compass, in general and specifically underwater. Even if we say this planet doesn't have a magnetic field, anybody this far advanced in technology would have some kind of navigation system. Plus we already have a map on the boat, it would seem plausible this would also be sent to the robot's HUD. (Plus you are already measuring boat speed in kmh vice knots, which implies some advanced navigation system exists, like GPS).

+ Enemies. I like the fact that they don't scale. It makes trying to get into bases at level 5 that are guarded by roller bots a challenge. Whereas at level 25 you can destroy them with the electric rifle after 2-3 hits.
- However, after you reach mid-tech tree I haven't seen any enemies that are a challenge. Maybe later in the story? I am at level 25 and just grew my first human (spent a lot of time exploring before chasing the story). I see in the roadmap that new enemies are coming, will be very interested to see what comes.

+ Item types/variety/placement: Some useful, some not, some not until later. I think I kept expecting to see more, but now have realized that there's really nothing else needed so far. I wanted more weapons, but only use the same 2 anyway, so not really needed. Haven't had any need for any grenades other than the occasional basic ones. Compared to something like Planet Crafter there are far fewer items, but most in that game are base-building items which aren't needed here on my trusty fishing trawler rust-bucket! (Side note: love the trawling net!)
- I would like to hire a marine architect and make the back of my boat about 5 feet longer! There just isn't a really nice way to place all the items there that I want. Having only a single point to connect to seawater and CO2 makes trying to squeeze in all the items needed to produce fresh water, methane, oxygen, etc., plus tanks for these and diesel and petrol...a nightmare. Sometimes you can mount to walls and ceilings, but sometimes not. Devs, maybe make the seawater pump an item that can be built anywhere instead of the one permanently placed on the boat?

+ Repairs/Fuel usage: Seen some complaints online about having to repair wind turbines. I think this is a very realistic requirement. Wind turbines in the real world require maintenance. The game makes you realize that repairing them early saves resources, also more real-life. Devs, I would like to expand this to see periodic repairs required for the diesel and electric engines. As much as they get used, they would need upkeep.
Some people also complaining about diesel consumption while running at top speed. Well, yeah. Again this is real world. Run a boat diesel at 2-4 knots and it will sip fuel. Run it flat-out and you are going to burn massive fuel. It might be slightly high in the game, but that boat looks pretty big and heavy, so it's probably not that far off.
Also like the boat repairs. If a roller bot, shark, angel has caused damage to the boat, probably needs to be repaired.
- When running only electric engine, there is still a stack at the stern that is exhausting something...what the heck is that? My electric engine has exhaust gasses? Strange.

Issues:
I am running this on my laptop. (ASUS Predator, i9-14900HX, 16GB, RTX 4060 Laptop GPU)
- Have had a few minor performance issues but nothing like some of the bugs in other reviews. The game locked up once. One time my ship was half sunk by an angel attack (I think) and the graphics were completely overwhelmed. Don't think the game could render all the ship components (half above, half below water) intermixed with the waves and ocean components. I see some definite blurring and artifacting during heavy storms/rain while at sea.

-Mooring lines seem to come detached frequently. I am not sure if this is a bug or if those sneaky angels are doing it...?

- Sometimes where you can place items seems odd. I remember I couldn't place a connector on a big permanent glass wall but could place it on a tiny metal strip nearby.

Overall:
Very enjoyable game. Glad the devs are adding new stuff to it, making it even better.
Developed my own "minigame" trying to see how far I can shotput items into the recycler, or bounce tires into it. :)

Nice balance of activity at bases and the relaxed chilling of doing nothing while the SS Rust-Bucket slowly cruises along to the next location, wind turbines at the bow madly spinning away, cranking out the amps to the engine, while I sit on the bow pulpit with a rifle on shark watch, watching the sunset, sea breeze in my hair...wishing I had a pirate flag!!!

Spent hours exploring different "fixes" people online had for the performance issues, I have an RTX 3080TI that's overclocked and Ryzen 9 5900X and yet the most I could squeeze out of this game was 50 FPS the starting area, I didn't even bothering going farther with the game because I know it'll just get worse as you build and expand. I really hope to be able to revisit this game day and change the review because it does look like a blast to play.