endless-sky VS MechEngineer

Sounds very similar to Endless Sky[1] - another open source game drawing on the old Escape Velocity games. I really enjoyed both Endless Sky and the Escape Velocity games, so I'll have to check out Naev at some point!

[1] https://endless-sky.github.io/

There's an open source successor to Escape Velocity that's fun and continues to grow:

https://github.com/endless-sky/endless-sky

#2 - Endless Sky - ALSO inspired by Escape Velocity, but IMO this is more polished Escape Velocity clone and could reasonably be called the modern successor. EXCELLENT space trade/piracy/combat and definitely take some good strategy to get far into the game.

From the changelog

Bottom left of the website has discord invite link https://endless-sky.github.io

You could just use Mech Engineer on its own, but even that recommends RogueTech or BTA so that you will have ready access to all the components that you need.

You might want to pick up one of the mods that includes Mech Engineer for greater tinkering. As the description mentions, both Battletech Advanced (BTA3062) and RogueTech include it, with the latter being more significantly different from vanilla. Lots more customization possible, and both of those mods include a lot for stuff to customize (RT moreso, like... 2600+ mechs/variants, vs ~1800 in BTA).

I can heartily recommend BattleTech Advanced if you don't want to go as far as Roguetech. It's definitely tougher, but not as impenetrable as Roguetech is. (Plus there's lots of difficulty sliders so you can probably tweak it to be about as forgiving as vanilla).

I really enjoy the MWO-style mech customization that both of these add (the https://github.com/BattletechModders/MechEngineer mod); one critique I have of vanilla Battletech is that they simplified the mech construction mechanics a lot, and stripped out some of the tradeoffs that make mech design interesting in the canon. In vanilla, you just optimize for free tonnage, and can put jump jets on everything, so there are just a few chassis in each weight class that are strictly optimal for most loadouts; this makes it quite boring as there's little reason to pick other chassis. In BTA/Roguetech you can take an XL engine to shave off a lot of weight, but that means your mech will die if you lose your side torso. Lots of meaningful trade-offs, with no "best solution".

I will admit that my eyes glossed over when I first started the game and looked at all the new part types I had to learn though...