The size felt just right for me. Didn’t explore every area before I stopped though. Ship variety felt ok, just wish there had been some more variety in aesthetics. Many are straight up ugly, and the haulers are near identical to each other’s variants.
I only got as far as amassing enough cash to be a small-time player in the market and was building out my station to manufacture something always in high demand but when I got the capital to help defend that one system that always gets overrun, it went down the toilet. Broke my spirit. I was so looking forward to the RTS parts of the game.