Maybe you played an earlier verson?
It is similar but there is a lot of crafting by way of mining, then refining the ore with refineries, then having assemblers to build components for construction of ships/stations/infrastructure. The exploration of different mechanics is the most fun for me -- and the balancing of infrastructure production with mining capacity.
The developers recently added in an ejector, collection and conveyor system that can automate a lot of processes. For example, say you have a base in the middle of space, or on a distant asteriod, you can have an ejector launch things across the expanse of space (at relatively low speeds) and have the things be collected by a collector at a distant point. The conveyor system will pull items from the collector and deposit them in a storage facility or move them to a refinery/assembler automatically if the there is work to be done.
|