MareSerenitis: So, I've played through a game right through to opening the domes and think I have a measure on most of the things. (Possibly.)

My first colony was basically made of random spaghetti nonsense with horrible snaking connectors everywhere because I didn't know about spacing and had to route around things which were convenient then, but less so now.
The "self-sufficient" dome plan did not help with this as it has several components jammed right up against the dome leaving no access from one side of one of the connection points, which added to the powerline pasta above.
I probably won't be bothering using that again.

There has been many instances of me wishing I could build pipes and cables simultaneously with a single command, as running the pipes first followed by cables is essentially doing the same thing twice. (Pipes 1st as they have lower tolerance for terrain than cables for some reason.)
Seems like pointless duplication and busy work tbh. Both utilities could easily be rolled into a single "connector" in order to reduce unnescessary clutter and micromanagement.

The first mystery I had was "Wildfire",because of course it was.
And the delightful combination of dead people everywhere, having to push research super hard, and grow cures instead of crops very nearly did me in.
Sanity slowly twirls down the toilet with each death, and every colonist not working makes things that much harder.
The only thing that saved me was the seemingly inexhaustable birth rate, which I can only imagine made my colony look like a load of "Logan's Run" cosplayers.
Going into this blind was a fraught experience, and quite well set up. Very much looking forward to the others if they're this well put together.

One thing that could be improved for this mystery is having the ability to automate the resulting export rocket, as having to manually land it to the same pad every time in perpeptuity is quite tedious.
Especially if you have a designated area for this which can service and turn around the rocket with minimal delay - the requirement for player input here seems unnescessary, and the option to automate it in same manner as rare metals exports would be appreciated.

Interesting fact: On Mars, people grow faster than food.
Once I cleared the mystery my entire colony seemed to go baby-crazy, due to the above mentioned birth rate.
I was kind of curious as to what would happen if I just left it alone to do it's thing.
It turns out that massive homelessness and unemployment happens. And the kind of amusing reaction to building a new dome anywhere, which is 70-or-so people turn up before any of the buildings inside are even finished, and are like "yo dude, we live here now. k."
Even for a micro dome, which can hold 20-30 people, at best.

I also learned that you can't rely on shuttles to deliver food. I tried this several times with remote domes, and ended up with a starving dome every time.
Shuttles in general seem amazingly useful but also somewhat capricious, as they seem to prioritise odd things sometimes.

I'm quite a fan of the music on some of the radio stations, but rarely use them.
Why?
Because I absolutely loathe the "hosts" talking nonsense all the time. It's very distracting, especially when they start repeating themselves.
I really wish there was an option to turn them off, and just have the music.

Another thing I wanted to do as soon as I was told about lakes, was to fill some of these huge craters with water.
But there doesn't appear to be any option to do this. Shame.
Also terraforming related; some toxic pools can form in areas where drones cannot reach, and so become essentially permanent unsightly fixtures.

Overall: Polished. But not perfect.
Game flows very well and has had a good amount of thought and effort put into making it interesting, but has some minor streamlining issues with certain things being more player/micro intensive than they need to be.

[e]

Also worth noting the in-game encyclopedia is a good example of the un-polished-ness of the game.
A lot of care and effort has gone into making it look very presentable, but almost zero effort has gone into the thought behind what is being presented.

Every single item in the game is listed, which to be fair, does sound rather like what you'd expect of an encyclopedia.
But there's no need at all for this!
Many of the in-game items are variations of the same thing, essentially identical in function just a different size or specialisation.
For instance, every single resource depot is listed, with each depot getting it's own entry.
This is just a mess of clutter, and could have been handled much better with just a single entry for the depot detailing it's function, with an additional bit at the bottom for the universal.
The same principal follows for all the other variations of items.

Also, the encylopedia is missing some information, such as building restrictions due to sponsor or breakthrough techs.