You have a lot of negativity. Not to sound like a fool, but is there anything about the game that positively stands out to you?
As for bug catching, it's easier than it sounds, but hard to master. For example, one bug I have found has to do with the woman with the riddles encounters, the ones where you are presented with a riddle. Solve it correctly, and you get some random meds. A bug I found is the listed rewards and the ones the text say you get do not always match up, like it says you get Antibiotics, but you actually get Iodine pills.
The point is to look for features that are not working correctly, call it in via the blue cockroach or the forums, and continue on with your game, dealing with the bug to the best of your ability. Might get fixed in the next patch, and given you are not fond of the World Map, least you can do is help with the feedback.
If I sound like a fool for saying all this, it's on me. But StA is in Early Access, so I am trying to help out where I can. No point in being angry if there are elements you wish were implemented. Besides, you could make mods. There is a small modding community you could check out here:
https://mods.paradoxplaza.com/games/surviving_aftermath?orderBy=desc&sortBy=best
Maybe you could become a modder and make improvements to the overworld yourself?
Okay, well first of all, I like plenty about this game, but this thread is about a part I just can't stand that I find so half-baked it drags down the experience of the good part of the game that I enjoy more. So yes, I would naturally be voicing a lot of criticism about it. And you're right the game is in early access, but bug squashing is only one aspect of game design, and the other is analyzing the bits that just don't work and criticizing them. I know it sounds like I'm impossible to please where the overworld is concerned, but it's just because I don't think the fixes I've seen are really fixes to core game design problems. The point behind early access is to find stuff that doesn't work, and honestly when I play the overworld it's night and day. Here you have this exploratory city builder that asks you to make a lot of tough choices, and then every once in a while you have to zoom out away from it and make some not so tough really brain-dead choices.
When I think about the overworld I always ask myself a few key questions:
Is what I'm doing allowing me to make interesting choices?
Am I enjoying what I'm doing?
Would I rather be doing something else than playing this section?
And for me, where the overworld is concerned, it's a resounding no on all three questions. I'm not making interesting choices. I'm not enjoying or even engaged in what I'm doing, and I'd rather be playing the city-building than be forced to engage with the overworld, but you've at the bare minimum look for science so that's just not an option.
I do not think, and this is not to disparage anyone's work, that a handful of quests are really going to make something so fundamentally undercooked enjoyable for me. Seriously, it's not a hard question to ask: What will you be doing the second you've seen every overworld quest? The answer is what you were doing one update before.
Look, I get it, I'm a wet blanket, I'm poo-pooing a part of a really fun game, but it's only because I sincerely think that nothing but a ground-up rework could make it interesting. Right now it reminds me a lot of those free-to-play strategy games where you had to invade like one tile at a time, and they were all cookie-cutter and samey. I'm not saying it was low-effort, but it sure LOOKS really low effort and doesn't jell with city-building aspect very well, especially how deep the city-building aspect has gotten. The overworld feels like it is something out of an entirely different game.
Also, I can't mod, and it would take me months if not years to learn how to mod this game with the skill and understanding of the mechanics to pull out this overworld and give it the ground-up change it needs. That's sort of why I'm beseeching the developers. I mean I can tell when I pipe is wrong, but it takes a lot of skill to actually fix the pipe that's why people call professional plumbers.