Astro Galaxy - a realistic space exploration game

And it's fairly simple:

People need food
Ships need electronics

Why not make those commodities, already available in the game, vital to ships and crew survival? Ships who run out of electronics (to be consumed at a rate to be determined) slowly deteriorate, until they disintegrate, killing all crew and losing the hull (but not the license). Crew simply dies without food, also to be consumed at a rate to be determined. It adds a dimension to SOS missions and gives real life players a reason to log on and maintain ships and modules regularly, or they just die and disappear, affecting their power ratings till they're a big fat ZERO.

It does require captains to plant a cargo bay (or perhaps even a brand new module called a farm or something, which, depending on tech level, can hold and produce a certain amount of food though that unit itself should depend on electronics not to deteriorate) on planets they put modules, or keep a ship or station with the right supplies in orbit. Bottom line is that without playing an active role, units should die out (and disappear) automatically.

how about making SOS missions that ask for food or electronics, like we already have SOS missions that ask for medicine.

The bolded part reads suspciously like micromanagement, as if there's not already a lot of that in the game. Tt was reduced a lot when I gained VIP and started using the autopilot to handle jumping. Problem with this game is it really puts no upper limit on how many things we can own. Everytime we create a new asset it's something additional to manage. I'm not sure how much Sir Emi has considered this issue. Does s/he want things to scale well so that players aren't encumbered when they have masses of ships/modules/miners/stations/etc? Lots of games suffer from this--they get more sluggish in late-game.

But if I were making my own game I'd probably do similar, since micromanagement comes naturally to my mind. I like technical problems. The problem is there's a limit, even for me. Micromanagement is ok--I think--if it has multiple dimensions, but otherwise it's just grindy.  What do I mean by that? I mean if you're repeating the same simple action for multiple things, something that could easily be replaced by code, then ti's going to be dull and grindy. However, if the action you're doing for multiple things isn't easily replicated by code (needs good AI, for example) then it has hte potential of being ok. I think this happens as dimensions are added to the problem. It gets harder and harder to code it. Meanwhile our mind remains capable.

I think it all boils down to content. Content doesn't have to be story/drama/plot/character. It can be a tactical game or a puzzle game or just Tetris. The content is fun to the player, mostly because it's not too repetitive. When something is repetitive it lacks diversity, so there's nothing really happening that challenges your mind or otherwise engages you. Only certain aspects of Tetris--for example--are repetitive, like the way you move a piece or the color of things, but the game itself isn't. How you're going to win is different from each game to the next. The player doesn't know exactly what to do.

It has to challenge our thinking, not our patience. It has to have multiple dimensions. Tactical/strategical decisions.

It has asked for assistance from other industrial electronic devices by eletronic it.