So I decided to check it out after all the raving reviews and still not sure what to think of it. It's definitely a massive timesink with all the micromanagement of getting all the ingredients, food, etc. But if there was no micromanagement, there would be not much game left, so I suppose you have to like that. If I had to summarize it, I'd say it's Minecraft meets The Sims.
Also, the UI could be better. I have raw rice and a stove, but cannot figure out why they keep eating the raw rice instead of cooking it. What am I missing?
When you ask that question it tells me you haven't really worked out the basics of how to automate your colony (which I didn't either for a long time because it's kind of an arcane system). But basically, every "workbench" has recipies that you can adjust, both in terms of what to make, what ingredients are allowed to make them, AND how many they should produce. Once you "get it" you can set everything up so your peoples will do mostly automated stuff. The last one is notably useful for letting your dudes know to stop producing once they reach a certain threshold.
You can forgo a lot of the most annoying micro by taking the time to setting up each workbench to produce desired stuff only from desired components. It's basically the same system as when you set up what's allowed in a Stockpile zone.
For me, the most annoying micro is the fundamental building material upgrading and cleaning. For the first one, destroying walls, floors etc. to put up new stuff takes a million years and I bet something like 1/3 of a playthrough comes down to just doing that. For cleaning, I think it really highlights the game's core weakness, because it's not a matter of finding the right balance: since your colony changes so much over time, you have to adjust cleaning priorities for your guys all the damned time, especially once you start putting down "roads" between your buildings.
The worst part of this is keeping your cooking area clean. It's basically impossible to do automated. If you set up cleaning schedules to where your kitchen is always clean, you'll have "overcleaning" wasting your pawns time. But if you set up cleaning lower than that, your kitchen will constantly be too dirty, even with sterile tiles. It's annoying as fuck.
So as for your overall initial sentence about how the game wouldn't be there without micro... at least it's true that this is one of those games that is infinitely more fun, somehow, than what you actually do. Moment-to-moment gameplay is often even tedious, but seeing it all come together at those progress intersections is immensely satisfying.
Still, after a couple of playthroughs I find it really hard to start a new game. Even if I know I'll enjoy it once I've got a lot of the initial stuff setup, that initial phase is just mindnumbingly boring to me.
