Review initially based on Playtest which seems to be pretty much the exact experience between yesterday's test and today's launch. I will update as time goes on:

TLS feels like if FTL had given a focus on "you have more time to do" with a mix of "hey want to build the ship before it gets destroyed?"

You zip from point to point with goals you can hit to earn money and each time you successfully do a mission you get a neat little paycheck and a bit of XP that at this time only changes levels that can open better paying missions (would love to see some form of RPG system at some point but expectations are low).

The best money maker I found is mining, which is fun and simplistic! Do enough delivery missions, buy your first laser, buy your first logistics drone hub, buy a logistics drone, and just go to town! First mining missions pay pretty well then you can get a smelter, refine your own nonsense, and before you know it you're going to have a gigantic ship!

Your ship has two floors, the main one and the habitation floor which stores your "people to be delivered," and some extra subsystems. Main floor is where your everything happens. Crew, storage, machines, power, weapons, etc.

Ship building is nice enough, you build your ship in whatever format you want, add extra armor here and there, floor spaces, you do you and it has a mirror mode so you don't have to painstakingly do point-to-point builds you can just let the mirror system do it for you. Truth be told, by the time the demo ended I had a gigantic flying brick full of mining opportunity. The game doesn't punish you for flying a brick, it just means you need more thrusters to keep up with things.

Storage is generic storage. You set zone, they dump things in zone. You can set zones that are meant for solo items at which point that becomes the highest priority for that item and any spillage gets dumped into the "extra" storage zone you set which is a nice touch.

Honestly I didn't get into combat once, not really my interest but a lot of players have reported it being smooth.


My recommendations for the dev team:

1. Upgrades: I don't mind building 20 of a thing but truth be told it's kind of silly there aren't upgrades, but that may come down the line.

2. Storage: It's nice to dump things on the floor but honestly I would kill to have multi-cell storage functionality. Build a shelf, store two or more of a thing/increase the amount that can be stored in that spot. It took several years but I managed to nonsense RimWorld into having it for vanilla shelves and by golly I'm going to keep that fight going strong. Nobody just dumps things on the floor and calls it a day, that's for when you're broke or just starting!

3. Self-production of buildings: I can mine the materials, no reason why I can't forge out what I need with enough of various materials.

4. Logistics: Probably planned down the line but we could use some form of more logical material movements. Whether it's zippy drones that function inside the ship, a pipe system that carries and dumps items, or even the classic conveyor style of Factorio it seems silly having 50 random guys running around hauling everything by hand. I hope to see your crew sit at machines and operate them at some point, need rest, function like people, etc at some point but who knows what the future may hold.