100% would recommend. If you like games like Elite Dangerous, Stellaris, and playing with Legos, this is right up your alley. And if you aren't of a creative mindset, there's a ton of player-made ships and stations you can download right from the workshop.

Avorion is a game only for people who really enjoy voxel-based building games. If you find yourself in that group, this review is not for you. I am not the biggest fan of voxel builders but I'm far enough into this that a review feels pertinent.

This ship-building game has been in development since 2012. The ship-building part of it has left me scratching my head wondering how. Luckily the workshop is filled to the gills with amazing (and performative) designs that you can just nab for your playthrough, but that feels like it's missing the entire point of Avorion -- after all the loads of mining you'll be doing isn't exactly gripping, and the combat isn't anything to write home about either.

Designer Issues:
- Mirror tools exist but you cannot edit the anchor point for any mirror plane. If you don't build with this in mind from the get-go it becomes very easy to lock yourself out of functional use of the y and z-axis mirrors.
- You can clip objects together but only by a certain amount. Want to know what that amonut is? Too bad.
- Object selection tools do not behave like what you'd expect from any designing software released after the turn of the century. Selections persist through operations so expect to paste something, select it, hit the delete key, and then delete some stuff on the other half of your ship because it's still selected. You can deselect shapes not by selecting them again, but by ctrl+selecting them. This keybind is not explained anywhere, including the Building Hotkey Menu.
-You can't copy multiple objects at once if they're not touching each other.
- Camera controls feature left/right arrow keys for panning left/right, so you'd expect up/down arrows to pan up/down, right? Nah, it zooms in/out instead. No you can't change this. The only way to pan up/down is to rotate your camera such that you're facing directly up/down, and THEN use the up/down arrow keys. It is impossible to pan up/down inside the building mode while maintaining your camera angle.
- Placing objects is mouse-based, meaning that if you want to attach an object by its corner, to the corner of an existing object, you can't. You'd have to make a temporary object to achieve this.
- There is no option to modify scaling to only affect one side of the object unless your attach point is on the other side. If you just want the panel you're placing to extend further on one side, your only option is to extend it on both sides and then reposition the whole thing. If the repositioning means that the shape's centerpoint is off of the anchor shape you're ♥♥♥♥♥♥ (see previous point)
- If anything is placed ever-so-slightly off, it'll create really gross shadows at the seam.
- Saving designs doesn't give you a prompt for what to save it as. You have to wait for the save to populate (which takes a while as your ships grow larger in the mid-game), then right click on that to re-name.

Other general complaints with the game is the fighter AI. There is no general "attack enemies" command -- you have to select the squadron(s) you want (shift+number), then select the specific command (shift+a for attack the targetted unit). After the targetted unit is killed they default to defending your ship instead of attacking the next one. This is a major issue when nearly all combat in the game happens with swarms of enemies.
Fighters returning to your ship is the real stickler with their AI though. I've seen fighters orbit my stationary ship for 5-10 minutes, straight up clipping through the hangar, and STILL not make it in. If you leave the sector without them, they stay in that sector, floating around. After 10 minutes if these guys still struggle to make it back inside, as far as I'm concerned they're lost to the void.

In terms of station building and getting a fleet running, at time of writing (currently in Xanion-rich sectors) I don't really see a point. I hop sectors so often than establishing a base of operations/territory seems pointless, and as I understand it once I move to the galactic core that's it as far as the game's progression is concerned -- rebuild my ship out of avorion alloy and then I can take on anything. At some points I've kind of wanted to have some mining boats to help make transitioning to the next alloy faster, but the game fundamentally pidgeonholes you into a jack-of-all-trades so making something dedicated to mining seems pointless.
Additionally, I've only ever found one hireable captain in my entirity of playing the game, so making fleets seems like something that Avorion is just not suited for.

Overall, if you're a voxel-building fan you probably already own this game. If you're not really a giant fan of voxel-builders I'd advise to stay away: the core foundation of the game is riddled with so many frustrations that it just becomes an aggravating experience.

I like