Yes, there are some missions seeded across the galaxy. But they are few and far apaprt and no, the game does not take you by the hand and walks you through the story. You've got to find things, or google them...
I think RamTha did issue a mission for the Guardian Ruins, maybe still does.
At Obsidian Orbital you get missions for Thargoid artefacts.
There are listening posts seeded across the galaxy. Most of them lead to something of interest.
Sometimes GalNet drops a hint and some rare "tip-off" missions pop up ... and even rarer they lead to something meaningful. I think I remember rumors that one time there was a "tip-off" that was somehow relevant ... not sure though.
Ther first Interstellar Initiative installed a ferry to the Guardians and had some story-gameplay around the ruins.
Sometimes there are (or have been?) littel sniplets of story at the station - faction - news - boards.
Thx Arkadi, that's what I though, small pieces of disconnected information across many different communication channels (missions, galnet, posts in every station etc).
Definitely googling is the fastest way and many things I found so far was there. Hopefully there's a huge community helping each other.
Galnet and older initiatives to new incomers can be hard to look into, imagine a huge archive with piles of information that are not even useful anymore (prior to Horizons, I can say)..
I'm not trying to discuss if there's a better method to find things, I was just wondering how ppl that may have huge gaps (me in example, I stopped playing ED on PC in the early 2015 then went back earlier this year on PS4) go after that kind of progress without googling it.
In any case, thanks for your clarification o7