Unpopular take: Rogue core is good, but it needs to lean harder into the roguelite genre— not try harder to be DRG
Frankly, the bones are well fleshed out: DRG’s combat system, biome diversity, and enemy selection make the pivot to a roguelite easy and sensible.
I don’t see anything wrong with the timer that many have voiced frustration over. Roguelites are designed to be fast paced.
What rogue core struggles to do is maintain that pace UNTIL you hit the death timer. Frankly, the game needs endless spawn like (risk of rain) that rewards points for each enemy killed combined with a personal upgrade barter system that is superimposed over all of the current systems (shared barter, equipment, weapon, terminals).
We need shields (not armor). We need passive health regeneration. We need base weapons with unlimited ammo.
Rogue core has the potential to be an absolute unit of a FPS roguelite; but ghost ship needs to commit to the genre fully.
Edit: Many of you who dislike the weapon and equipment suggestions are not connecting that the suggestions are designed to accommodate a gameplay loop that utilizes endless wave.
You can still have an ammo economy for large, useful weapons that is not trivialized by a baseline ranged weapon with unlimited ammo because of endless spawn. Without some sort of baseline, unlimited ammo kit— the entire gameplay loop would consist of hunting for ammo in an endless wave environment.
The primary suggestion of this post is to implement endless wave. It is the opinion of the OP that leaning into the roguelite, endless wave would fill the void left by the lack of whimsy and exploratory depth that DRG enjoys.