Indeed is a combination of Raft, Factorio/Satisfactory and Space Engineers!
Is there a big feature / aspect of the gameplay the team decided to abandon / postpone for now, either due to technicalities or design direction?
No, there was nothing we had to abandon. I wouldn’t say that we postpone something, but rather then we planed something. The best example is to personalize every Astronaut on the space station using Meta Human technology. This gives us opportunity to offer this as a reward in out Kickstarter campaing!
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/teradgames/astrocolony
I already know that people love this idea!