Ended up getting all ten of my final colonist off that that god forsaken rock on January 11, 5502 in a game that was start to finish BTSG v1.0. First off, Research felt balanced perfectly for this game. I had to put a concerted effort in to it to advance. It throttled my progression but in a way that felt right.
The map I ended up playing on had plenty of natural materials so I didn't have to trade for any steel, plasteel, or uranium to build the ship. Things might have been more tense had that not been the case and I wouldn't object to having "trader only" materials being required to launch into space.
I had particularly bad luck harvesting Mech Brains on this play through either by killing the mech outright in battle, damaging that particular sensor, or critical failures when harvesting and only three turrets were built without buying the parts. I'm guessing that this was probably an anomaly since my luck was much better in my previous games (Is Mechanoid disassembly efficiency the driving stat for this? ...or surgery?).
Art was sufficiently nerfed and I found tailoring to be more than sufficient at bringing in funds. I definitely had more than enough leather and skins coming in to feed that operation because... Farming was tough, man. Actually, it would be more accurate to say that it was the blight that was tough. My first three rounds of trying to crow terminator seeds ended in blight and that left a bad enough taste in my mouth to not bother with the much more expensive (and interesting) viable variety on this play through. Later on in the game I had few crop batches in a row those were cultivated without issue but by that time I had come to mostly rely on hunting since it was much more reliable, "trained" my shooters, and gave me materials to make clothes for colonial use and profit. Also, there were quite a few times that bulk goods traders were selling food cheaper than its corresponding terminator seed. I know that, at the end of the day, one seed gets you more than one of the corresponding crop but I found myself betting on the sure thing by just buying the food instead playing Russian Roulette with blight.
Even with my blight battles, it was a great fun! I had more than a few "oh shit" moments where my mistakes almost wiped out my colony and plenty of mornings that came too early because I stayed up way too late the night before feeding this addiction (The blame for which, I lay solely at your feet
). I look forward to all the future changes, both large and small, but in the meantime I'm going to start up another game.
The map I ended up playing on had plenty of natural materials so I didn't have to trade for any steel, plasteel, or uranium to build the ship. Things might have been more tense had that not been the case and I wouldn't object to having "trader only" materials being required to launch into space.
I had particularly bad luck harvesting Mech Brains on this play through either by killing the mech outright in battle, damaging that particular sensor, or critical failures when harvesting and only three turrets were built without buying the parts. I'm guessing that this was probably an anomaly since my luck was much better in my previous games (Is Mechanoid disassembly efficiency the driving stat for this? ...or surgery?).
Art was sufficiently nerfed and I found tailoring to be more than sufficient at bringing in funds. I definitely had more than enough leather and skins coming in to feed that operation because... Farming was tough, man. Actually, it would be more accurate to say that it was the blight that was tough. My first three rounds of trying to crow terminator seeds ended in blight and that left a bad enough taste in my mouth to not bother with the much more expensive (and interesting) viable variety on this play through. Later on in the game I had few crop batches in a row those were cultivated without issue but by that time I had come to mostly rely on hunting since it was much more reliable, "trained" my shooters, and gave me materials to make clothes for colonial use and profit. Also, there were quite a few times that bulk goods traders were selling food cheaper than its corresponding terminator seed. I know that, at the end of the day, one seed gets you more than one of the corresponding crop but I found myself betting on the sure thing by just buying the food instead playing Russian Roulette with blight.
Even with my blight battles, it was a great fun! I had more than a few "oh shit" moments where my mistakes almost wiped out my colony and plenty of mornings that came too early because I stayed up way too late the night before feeding this addiction (The blame for which, I lay solely at your feet
). I look forward to all the future changes, both large and small, but in the meantime I'm going to start up another game. 
