General feedback on the game thus far

I have several thoughts and feedback from my perspective:

Colonization and Contracts

• Currently completing 'random' missions advances the colonization percentage.
• This doesn't feel like progress it feels like MMO fetch tasks.
• How to fix?
• Finishing a task does "unlock" new blocks, but it doesnt really elaborate on it or guide the player or give you anything tangible as a win/reward. Give us something.
• Finishing a task at a base you can abandon it or tear it down, not exactly colonization behaviour, and you will never use it or go to it again or communicate with it - you should at least have a reason to return or it should provide some purpose for it being there. A 'mining base' to 'processing base' to 'well-lit design floor base' for, say, making an upgraded ship with some missions to help comes to mind.
• Crashing the provided ships within the first sector should start up, automatically, a way for users to repair or acquire a replacement - you will lose the general public here if this isn't handled well. The idea above could be integrated with this.
• Flying to the other side of the planet is a pretty steep ask for someone brand new to space engineers. The users will need way more handholding for such a long trip (and how to avoid plunging into the ground).
• Need some way to stay entertained in transit - ingame radio like Dune? ingame video ads like in Helldivers? The game can feel a little too barren or lonely (although, sometimes that is actually a wonderful experience but not 100% of the time) - maybe some ancient earth signals that came in through a wormhole or something? Old radio-timey-wimey sci fi stories? Sounds silly but believe me people eat this stuff up
• Long term - higher end sectors would have more challenging missions and no more hand holding and often not enough resources at the location to complete the task - once players know how to play that wont be a problem

Tools

• Once you can make an atmo or space miner utility vehicle it feels like a slog to upgrade handheld tools just for the moments in between we would use them. The very first mission should probably have something to upgrade your welder after some starter diggy diggy. Upgrading tools should be made fun and put in the user's face.
• Block type unlocks dont seem to be announced all that well and the 'story' doesnt really present you with a reason to want/need/use them. Walk the player into attaching a drill or welder to the starter ship. The story seems like it could use some serious refinement for better user engagement into the game systems. I already know space engineers but my assumption is we want players to come in who never played before.

Game Systems

• Graphics are incredible, great work so far.
• Odd sideways vector-changing thrust when turning with dampeners on is a doozy it shouldn't do that.
• I havent yet built a full ship from the ground up but already finding welding tedious and often difficult to hit the right block - also when grinding too. Space engineers 1 was a very big problem trying to teach "normies" how to build ship printers - what is your plan for se2 since the ships are going to be wildly more detailed and complicated to weld?
• I am open minded to playing without stone resources or ingots, but, it seems like backpack welding is just as efficient as manually processing the ores in the smelter/assembler then placing them in your backpack, which seems like a massive waste of time and provides no benefits other than a couple items that only those machines can make - it makes it a weird guessing game too I'm not thrilled with this. It would be better to have a backpack system to convert iron to plates, and have that be half as efficient as processing them in the smelter, something to cause player to really want to build one. Look into minecraft game loops like mekanism, tinkers construct, create, etc when it comes to tech progression done in an enticing way rather than a punishing way.
• We have to kind of 'smack' ship drills against the rock rather than being able to slowly advance without any bumping, remaining open minded to this but it has led to some awkward ship movements/getting stuck.

This is all i could think of for now, I haven't really refined these thoughts, so you can consider them a sort of early access to my feedback.