Happened twice, both to my #1 games. Tried Chrono Trigger as a kid and didn't like it, then came back and played it as a young adult and was like... damn... this is an actual treasure.

In 2015 I tried FFXI due to the XIV crossover event, and I could not get past the eccentric and clunky UI and the pacing of the combat. I tried again a couple of years later and committed to finishing all the stories. It became my new #1 and I think genuinely one of the best games ever made, in terms of revealing and pushing the artistic potential of online games, and games in general. Actual masterpiece and a massive innovation, and unlike Chrono Trigger I think the lessons are going to be a lot harder to learn and replicate.

this is the entire cycle that keeps undergrad computer science going

I get the feeling that "Techdirt" may be a bit biased.

nano for editing config files, emacs if I'm writing code... kwrite or joplin if I need a scratch pad or to share notes between devices respectively

If you start working towards it, I believe a Living Ship can be obtained in a week at the fastest. They're not great for S-rank ships, but they do have massive inventories and are very cheap to run. Meanwhile, if you save up, grab the first Exotic you like, since they're essentially the baseline "high average" you measure every other ship against. Interceptors can be acquired for "free" by locating one and doing a short fetch quest.

Also, once you're deep into the game and can afford to class-up a ship, finding any C-class ship and upclassing it makes it the best ship, so hang on to anything you like the look of. Credits also become trivial once you can make agricultural operations and break open depots, which opens up the process of buying and scrapping Vy'keen fighters for nanites and inventory expansions.

Mechanical spoilers for ideas on saving up for your first Exotic:

Probably what people would call an "MMO-lite". Everything is instanced for 1-4-32 players depending on the activity. There are dungeon crawls you can do for really useful loot that do facilitate multiplayer, and the Expeditions and probably civilised space tend to be really populated. I can't speak for Euclid because I'm off in Budullangr.

It really is the adventure galaxy. I'm always delighted when I find a new Spore world, personally! Hex and Bladed are close seconds. Overall though the "Dead"-type Weirds are great too, I especially like the Contour fauna.

Yeah, I only learned this by chance because of a builder in my Civ!

Planets actually have two kinds of pole. The magnetic poles at ±90 latitude on your scanner, and the geographic poles with short to no nights, which have to be found through trial and error.

There's also a method using trigonometry that I'm going to have to sit down and learn.

The reason this works is because planets have no rotation about their axis. The time of day is completely determined by their orbit about the sun. That way the sun is always shining on the equator and you can make a more educated guess about where the poles are.