Here's my take on this, and a funny tip in the end:
The trend these days for games is that they publish half-a-game as early access , some even as a "full-game" (X4-Foundations for example) and they still suck at the launch, bigtime...
If we get lucky there's going to be enough patches to make these games playable/enjoyable later.
However, frustration is what folks will get, me included.
My tip is, just wait about a half a year after the game is available before buying, or even more and get a nice price on sales.
And check out reviews on Steam or here in subsim, you get the picture...
But then again, I did not heed my own advice, haha, jokes on me etc.
I was backin' Uboat and bought X4 when it was released, uBoat is early access and X4 was very lame/broken at the launch, now it's gettin better thought.
Took some time to get use to this U-Boat game and I'm starting to like it, sort of,
it will need a lot of patching and modding tools and I hope they keep coming.
Meanwhile, take a look at those *.xlxs files on \UBOAT_Data\Data Sheets folder, I've been able to mod some values and see the effect in game.
Also, I don't really know what I'm doing but it's fun and kill's the time as any other game...
For example, in Sandbox.xlxs and in the Reputation Purchases tab,
change the cost to 0 and you get free reputation purchases from leading officer at port, here's a link to a pic I just made to illustrate my point:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZPd...ew?usp=sharing
Changes made with Libre Office
https://www.libreoffice.org/
Excuse me but now I'm going to edit those xlxs files even more, the fun is that
when the game farts, I dunno if it really was because of my editing or just a bug.