Knights of Sidonia is, as said, Macross Frontier with more of the crap trimmed off and infused with a MuvLuv cast. You can clearly see the influence, it's bright as starlight.
Don't feel bad, KoS is kinda weird and not particularly extraordinary in any sense except the display of why CGI isn't necessarily good.
For the most part I'll agree, but some scenes they did pull off really well.
The problems are mostly in the scenes between human characters talking, but honestly I'd rather have full CGI than a 2D show with 3D shoddily shoved in here and there to create an artistic clash. (A perfect example of this is the terrible Kantai Collection anime.)
I watched two episodes of KoS before dropping it. I ended up watching Shiki instead (which I liked quite a lot). I heard good things about KoS, but it hit a bunch of peeves that I didn't even know I had.
MECHS DANCING IN SPACE USING LANCES WHAT THE FUCK NO JUST NO.
(I haven't watched very much anime.)
They do explain why they use lances, it's somewhat understandable.
Beyond that;
By the second season most of the mechs are outfitted with long rifles that fire synthesized material that can kill guana, so the lances get put in storage and instead battles involve formations of mechs firing at the targets from long range.
I think the thing I liked about Knights of Sidonia (and why I stuck with it) was the unusual bend it takes towards the direction of a hard sci-fi series instead of being pure space fantasy bullshit.
Obviously it's not a true hard sci-fi series, but at the least it makes attempts, and that puts it up above a lot of the other dross that comes out.
Still have a bunch of problems with it regardless, but that's a whole different affair.