Well, the best way to phrase what I want right now in a space game is... I want to, after destroying an enemy ship, to be able to weld it to my own or cut off parts of it for my own purposes. Space Engineers can do that (albeit with some caveats- merge blocks require power, etc), but there's not much of a point because everything that ship has you can have as well due to a lack of any difference between part accessibility (no "better engine" that you can't craft yet or anything like that). If there's any other space game where this is both a possibility and has some actual tangible benefits, then I'd probably go and play it immediately. I'm sure it's possible to add some sort of progression to Space Engineers through modding, but I currently do not know of any such mods. I also doubt that there exist enough ships that use that mod that can be spawned in so that there's anything to actually encounter.
Yep, the only reason I play Space Engineers is due to the crazy amount of freedom when building, and how the physics interacts with it all.
It's a shame there's no progression, unless you count getting enough mats for a gravity drive as progression.
Mods help it a lot, but doesn't fix the clunkyness or grief-yness of the game -SE is by far the most frustrating game I've ever played. Things can, at any time, spontaneously explode.
But damn, killing an enemy ship's engines and watching it crash its face on an asteroid is great. And so is the rain of metal when 5+ enemy drones attack the base and get shredded by gatling turrets.
There's a mod that
adds tiered thrusters (higher tiers cost more Gold [Superconductor Components]) and
one that adds more weapons, which are more expensive to 'feed' than vanilla weapons and are a bit cooler. Other than that, I can't think of anything that resembles progression.
And it's also sad there aren't packs (yet) with ships using such mods.
In the end, I'm having with with it because I always wanted a game that lets me board ships, capture them, and do whatever I want with them. Some I repurpose, most I simply grind. And I can't explain why I feel so satisfied by it.
Once I'm done with that, though, it's definitely too shallow, even with 50+ mods.