Most strategy games have randomness in them, look at games like hero clix and final fantasy tactics. Randomness is important, but I agree that the critical attacks are too swingy, they shouldn't deal 10-20x the damage of regular attacks.
This would be higher if there weren't glitches, like workers not showing up, and the catapult not damaging enemies sometimes. Also I agree that the catapult should not slow down when you upgrade it.
You are using a really bad map projection that is biased towards the northern hemisphere (look at where the equator is on the map, it is much lower than halfway) and the circles you draw are very deceptive as they are not circles geographically but circles on your projection.
This is not a game of chance, and the game is meant to be frantic towards the end, if you don't like frantic games, that's ok, but don't try to make every game bland and boring.
You need to create a safe zone around the ship so no enemies spawn on top of you, or make a slightly longer delay before an enemy pops out, otherwise really fun.
You are still requiring us to grind ~400 enemies to get the required faction gains, even doing all of the quests. THAT SUCKS. DON'T MAKE PEOPLE GRIND, YOU ARE NOT GETTING PAID BY THE MINUTE!
I like the simplicity and I really like the fuel mechanic, but I think you could do a lot more with it without altering the main gameplay. btw, dieing to something off screen is really frustrating, that needs to go away.
@ Gunz666 sometimes you want to listen to something other than the game, like music, and so you don't want to turn off all sound, just the sound in the game.