I absolutely have no ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ idea on what I'm doing

the learning curve is a little bit steep as it involves a smidge of real world science unlike frostpunk, AOE, civ6 and stellaris. if you neglect your food production, oxygen production or your materials use, you will loose your colonist/dupes. but when you do get it? past the middle stage hump? it will suck you in. but i suggest you install some mods as this game pacing is rather slow. been playing this while working only after i have established food and oxygen sustainability. if you are getting this, also get the DLC, it adds a few more problems to solve and its rather fun.

regarding your pc spec; game play starts to a crawl when you reach end game as your CPU struggles to simulate every minute detail of thermal mass that is changing, every cell of gas, moving liquids in your pipes, the movement of dupes/colonist in the entire map your CPU will chug. the game does not care if you have the latest and greatest GPU in the market, all it cares is about your single core boost. when i say chug i mean chug from 200fps to 15-30fps

TLDR: math tickles your brain? you'll love this. but you need good single core boost cpu. 5ghz the better.

It's a bit difficult at first but after a while it's a nice solo game