I will recommend it, on sale, with the following caveats:

Honestly, Its a lot of fun except from some absolute enjoyment destroying issues. I am playing organically and not exploiting some of the quick cash guides that are out there so my ships and skills and gear are largely basic quality and I am only in 5th tier of ship, i doubt it very much, but perhaps some of the issues will change once I'm in better gear.

Regarding cash, you can literally buy skill books for skill points, so cash is the key to literally all advancement in the game. You need likely hundreds of thousands of skill points to max everything but they are awarded for almost every mission and action that you do so even without buying skill books i always "felt" like i was progressing, however...

Skills are somewhat annoying to acquire as there is a lot of flying around trying to find the ones that you need and they honestly don't really feel like they contribute anything at all beyond some of them unlocking access to higher tiers of gear: I always feel like for random encounters that I am far below the power curve and for missions involving combat that i am so far beyond the encounter that they die in a few hits. Shields, recharge rate, hull regeneration, and DPS really don't ever seem to keep up with raiders: the only difficulty in this game are the raiders, all mission combat is so trivial that the missions might as well read" go to <location0> double click on <object>, then go to <location1> and collect reward. Very poorly balanced combat scenarios.

Auto target works poorly, if at all: your harvesting weapons wont just grab the nearest thing and harvest it, they will fixate on whatever they decide they want to and then just do nothing. This is a massive flaw for combat as well, requiring constant micromanagement: I find that you must constantly cycle your weapons on and off because the AI is simply too stupid to change targets when you tell the game what target to choose.

Combat gets very frustrating after a while. Your ship will constantly get directly next to whatever it is targeting no matter the range of your weapons: I have a weapon with 5 kilometers range, but no, my ship wants to get nose to nose with the enemy (as close as 45 meters) which means point defense systems are largely useless.

The best way i can describe combat with the constant swarms of raiders (who, so far, are always ahead of the power curve, every single time), is laggy. I will target one and take it out, no problem, target the next one, and do nothing until the game finally decides to execute the commands i issue and then i get smoked. Largely, it feels like the enemy ships will leave you alone until you attack one of the group and then they Alpha Strike you to death.

All in all, combat is handled pretty poorly with a sub-par algorithm dictating how it works. This game is brimming with so much potential that it will never realize as the dev is winding down development. All this being said, this game has enough going for it that I will continue to play and try to build better better: i have barely scratched the surface in terms of ships and never touched crafting.

I realize how negative this all sounds, the point of which is to say that despite some glaring roadblocks, it is still fun enough to keep coming back to while i wait for the upcoming DLC for Star Valor.

It's a shame the developer is stepping away from this, though his reasons are understandable. Maybe he will change his mind in the future, who knows. He put many years of his life into this. Godspeed.

Yet...I have to say no. This game is missing a couple of pieces to bring the picture together, meaning an SP-experience I find enjoyable. Many had loads of fun with it, it's just not for me. I expected a more laid back version of Starsector, where you can finally trade (there is trading in Starsector but...it's complicated). I didnt expect a Port Royale or Patrician in space, but something with a little more substance. Couple of hours in, already bought a huge ship, which pretty much paid for itself in maybe 15 minutes. And at that point I didn't know why to go on.

Market is pretty much static, factions...well they are there I guess, nothing more. It's not like building up to something, be it your own little trade and manufacturing empire or helping a faction to gain dominance, it's only making more money for the sake of making even more money. Not fun for me in the long run.

Tried the other stuff: didn't get the point of refining and fabrication. Convoluted and time-consuming. Combat...just not a combat game for me, outfit decides outcome. And mining...yeah, no.

Some people are absolutely fine with "Do whatever you want" but for me it's not enough as a single player when nothing is really fleshed out. Showing promise, but just not there yet. And -as it looks like right now- never will.

It's a huge accomplishment to get this game where it is today, no question about it. The dedication alone over all these years...hats off. I actually knew before buying that development came to a halt. Wanted to give it a shot anyway. Maybe I'll try again some other time with that promising looking eXperimental mod. I even downloaded it, but yeah...no. Not right now.

So yeah, cannot recommend. Sadly. Yet I wish momo all the best in his future endeavours, whatever they may be.