I like the "start with just enough to eke out survival, build your way up until you're shipping tons of materials for great profit" part, but I wonder, what am I using this profit for? To enlarge my mining operation, to build bigger ships, to make more profit?
I get your point about almost every game being about shooting stuff, and I agree not every game needs that, but at the same time, I need to be building toward something.
In minecraft, I played for a while, had the best equipment, a bunch of mines, tons of diamonds and what not... and then I stopped playing, because all I could use those resources for was getting more resources.
In starmade, I could use those resources to build a mighty warship, to blow up pirate bases... but then what?
If exponential resource growth were enough, I'd still be wasting my time playing adventure capitalist (Even when I played it a lot, I knew it was the dumbest game ever...)
In DF, I love getting established, getting a military trained, fighting off a siege or two, etc. If the danger of invaders kept ramping up, it would be a great survival game, and would keep me interested a lot longer. Maybe someday...
What I'd love would be a game like this, where there's something beyond the very easy survival portion where you have to keep fighting to survive. Like if the game kept ramping the challenge up somehow...
The groundwork has been laid and laid again over and over. We have the first step of this great freeform game, we've nailed the freeform crafting survival sandbox, now we need someone to get the game part.
A sandbox is a place where you build a sandcastle however you want. A game would be where you try to build a bigger sandcastle than everyone else in 10 minutes, or something.