Thank you for the long and helpful review!
I completely agree about the flipping part. It is my first game with such menu system and I underestimated the difficulty of a good UI. In fact the last panel (with the dog's knowledge) was a late addition. Until then, I didn't want the player to think that the dog tells them what to do (because that's other way around). But this recap was very much needed to play correctly. However, I think some players didn't understand it: they thought that what the dog says is a "challenge" to complete, unrelated to the previous choices of the player (and it makes the game quite dull).
I am really happy you liked the game so much! I think I will expand this idea further. The execution is far from perfect and I will iterate on it. The challenge is to avoid "cold numerical analysis", as you called it yourself: at some point the player won't enjoy crafting equation (like for the pirates or the frequency) anymore. But I'm sure there are plenty of ways to explore that idea :)