To add a game. There is the mars simulation project. That game went way over my head, no idea what I was doing or if it was just a watching simulator or something. But here is a link to latest releases
https://github.com/mars-sim/mars-sim/releases
It took me months to get it working and then I got too confused after trying to figure it out for a few days lol.
I think I tried to run that all by itself over many nights some years ago, since it appeared to play itself well. And the end result is: Everyone died.
Most died when their vehicle broke down, did not carry the proper spare and run out of oxygen before relief could arrive. A few died when their
relief vehicle broke down together with their would-be rescuers. Most of the rest died of fire in their base.
While I understand that colonizing Mars would be hard, this was just brutal.
War in the Pacific is on sale too.
If you were personally to choose between the two. Would you go War in the Pacific or war in the west? I always loved pacific gameplay in games, but war in the west is newer so I imagine has more quality of life stuff. Though I still hear a lot of good about war in the pacific as well.
I personally would go with War in the Pacific... you can designate specific pilots to go back and start training future classes! As Japan, you can control what engines/planes to build!
EDIT: I always get a little sad when someone starts a thread here where my first thought is "OH YEAH! THIS IS MY JAM!!!" Then I look at the list and I already own everything on it. :-/
WitP sounded like micromanagement heaven. Not exactly my cuppa but does allow for amazing AARs.
WitW tracked pilot name, assignment, and statistics, but I have no idea if that's anything like it is in WitP.
Also pretty sure you did not already own all those railway signalling sims.
But how do you call a niche inside a niche? A cubicle?
But yeah, between games-that-looked-passable-for-a-spreadsheet-software and games-that-felt-too-close-to-someone's-job, there still aren't nearly enough out there, and the latter is not exactly on-topic for the OP.
EDIT:
There is Per Aspera. But who knows if that will even release cause devs haven't said a single thing at all but they could be hard at work. But looks like it'll be indepth and judging by screenshots looks like it'll be the best mars simulator to date. No idea how complex it'll be, but since I put mars simulation project, might as well put per aspera. (I try to sneak in a per aspera suggestion in these threads if it fits )
https://store.steampowered.com/app/803050/Per_Aspera/
Seemed like Surviving Mars on a larger and more abstract scale, from screenshots on the official site...Definitely gonna see where this one goes.