Written to be posted. The questions at the bottom are the point of posting it.
A salvage game where your base is a machine you drive, the world is fixed and hand-made, and the thing that kills you is not being shot. It's what you're carrying going bad before you get anywhere with it.
Post-collapse. Fixed terrain, so routes and distances can be learned and planned. Loot is procedural, so what's in a place changes between runs.
Nothing resets. No seasons, no wipes, no run-based progression.
Terrain and region layout are authored. Fully procedural interiors read as noise, and noise is why a lot of generated worlds feel empty.
You have one machine. It carries you, your storage, and everything you've bolted onto it. It is not a real vehicle and doesn't pretend to be. The parts are invented, the failure rules are set by the design, and you can learn all of it by using it.
It's also the save file. After forty hours it's covered in mismatched parts pulled off dead things, and you remember where each one came from.
Most games in this space make food a bar that ticks down. Here it's the whole problem.
What you salvage is perishable. It spoils on a clock, faster or slower depending on how you're storing it. Cold storage degrades with use and you can watch it happening. Fuel competes with cargo for the same hold space.
So the skill the game asks for is judgment, not reflexes:
A bad run doesn't cost you health. It costs you everything in the hold.
The failure state is different. Combat games ask whether you can win a fight. This asks whether you understood what you were carrying.
Concept stage. Looking for holes before building anything.