Which indies did you discover and would love more people to know about? I’ll start: The Pale Beyond. Not sure if it’s a hidden gem tbh, but it’s such a good story rich game. I laughed, I cried and felt the characters struggles. If you like story rich games/ choices matter, check it out.
I was playing Orbiter long before KSP came along. It taught me all I know about orbital mechanics. It helped ease the learning curve in KSP a lot. But after KSP came along I completely lost interest. KSP is a lot more fun and there’s a lot more to do.
Still had a laugh when my friend who made fun of me for playing orbiter ended up buying KSP, getting frustrated, rage quit and asked for a refund.
For some time, I considered Orbiter to be better at providing an arcade experience of “choose ship/scenario and fly away”. But now that KSP also has scenarios, maybe this argument doesn’t really stand now. But I still think that Orbiter’s MFDs are better than KSP’s manoeuvre planner (at least for precise manoeuvres)