at the risk of being a self promoting shill
there is plenty of gameplay in SC right now
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=paBVB8Jk-4g
I believe you have hit the sweet spot for playing SC Katie.
These might be the glory days. A disgrace on the way up, almost respectable today at the top, but the tumble back down the other side might be brutal.
It's the best of times though, for sure. Enjoy. A year or two ago you wouldn't have been able to complete any missions, or quantum travel without clipping out of your ship. Killer ramps and doors. Land claims for real money.
5 years ago (how time flies when you're having fun) and you might have believed Chris when he promised at citizencon that DREAMS were arriving that December, only to casually reveal in a fluff video with his devs a few months later that the features hadn't actually been designed or spec'd yet. Oops. Still, it boosted ship sales so he absolved himself on that one.
But as I say, you're seeing it today seemingly at it's most stable and - sort of - functional best. But like the longstanding SC streamers, SalteMike, Boredgamer etc you might find that those amazing immersive missions are ... it. The different activities aren't really there. Once you've done them, amazing, and then you can, well, do them again. In the same locations, in the one hand crafted but very pretty system. Those streamers don't do the things you're currently finding amazing, because once they did them once, they were done. If running around in your own and others ships is content, then sure, you can do that.
You might end up back with the nagging feeling the new shiny thing isn't so shiny, but more importantly it only survives year on year by convincing a small subset of the player base to spend ridiculous amounts of real money on new ships they could wait 6 months to buy in game. And without the whale purchases, the ... I cant think of the word ... game? thing? collapses. Because they routinely spend more than they bring in.
Although it probably won't collapse, the shell company shuffle will confuse prying eyes, and new "ships" will be designed by genuinely talented artists, and bought for
life changing sums by idiots.
(if this one doesn't get me banned I might just give up)