Combat I'll disagree cause Sean always kinda tried to walk back expectations of combat. At least from what I saw (and I paid close attention to any NMS news) he seemed to keep trying to walk back expectations that it was a combat game. It seemed more combat was in there cause it was a space game and you expect it but that he wasn't really interested in it being about the combat (basically I walked back any expectations of much gunfighting mechanics early on like a year or two before when watching interviews cause he did give the idea that it was going to be basic combat stuff and not really the main point of the game).
Yeah I don't necessarily disagree with any of your points. I too walked back at least my expectations of ground combat, as it always seemed rudimentary. I could be forgetting something he said, but I don't remember Sean walking back combat in general (other than questions about MP), especially as Combat was one of the four pillars they marketed the game on. And at least in the videos space combat seemed to have potential. It's hard to say how Sean feels about the combat because he was so cagey about details pre-release (this includes the trading too). Considering the amount of weapons they're adding to the multi-tool and ships it's safe to say they want to improve on the combat, but until they improve the AI and capabilities of the enemies it won't matter much.
I do agree that Sean is more of a heavy crafting/farming kind of guy...he seemed to get distracted in videos just mining rocks and asteroids. But I don't think that's all he wanted the game to be, either.
What does orbiting planets have to do with trading? With the exception of moons and space stations, planetary movement is going to have little impact on gameplay. The only way it will have an impact is if they add seasons.
What does building elaborate bases have to do with gameplay? Not everything is about mechanics... the premise of flying around in these somewhat-realistic star systems was evocative for me in the same way that the art direction was.
But to spitball some ideas
- orbiting planets would make trading-focused players have to think about their trading routes in terms of optimizing fuel usage as planets rotated around its star
- orbiting planets would allow planets/moons to rise and fall, and perhaps planetary alignments could trigger some game element to happen, such as portals activating, etc.
- rotating planets would allow unique and more realistic day/night cycles on each planet, which would factor into survival (you wouldn't know the cycle when you land on a planet, you could be in night time for hours or days)
Has anyone ever found a nice world without aggressive sentinels?
In Survival or in general? In normal mode I've found plenty of lush worlds with chill Sentinels. They only seem to get aggressive on planets with rare minerals. (why they let you mine pillars of some resources but freak out at a tiny Plutonium crystal I've never understood)