games

I love space stuff but am not the biggest fan of Minecraft style crafting/mining. I don't mind it in Stardew and factory games are a favorite genre of mine, for reference.

Have you played Cosmoteer? It's a bit like Dwarf Fortress/Dungeon Keeper, but you're building space ships, not digging tunnels. The mining part is simple and easy, you just click on wreckage to have your crew automatically mine and salvage asteroids or ships. You eventually will need factory ships for processing materials and crelating supply chains.

The main focus is on combat. It's an open sandbox (story missions are in the pipeline, there's just a lot of features the dev wants to implement first). You mostly go from system to system, fighting pirates and whatnot. Multi-player is great and there's an active competitive scene if that's your thing.

I haven't played it in a few months. Got bummed when I lost my flagship in an attack on a pirate space station. Still have four capital ships and all my civilian ships to make up my fleet, it just isn't the same though without my first baby. Might have to start a new campaign whenever there's a new update.