I think Space Engineers is supposed to be absurd. "Oh look here's a crashed space ship. Let's glue it to our ship and now we can go faster."
If you want a survival game without uhh... "regression," try Vintage Story. It's an awful game that is grueling hours of work for very little reward and no fun at all, but some people really like it. I'd put it one step above Desert Bus, myself.
CC: Sin Vega (npub1vjp…ppul)
