Hey for the record I've been playing a lot more with the kitchen sink fleet and the game is fun again, the flaws less than I thought and the good things better
Also trading is still a gimmicky however I've found blowing up every Luddic Trade fleet on sensors does create some exploitable trading.
I would still say though that the game is somewhat difficult to advance in outside of a somewhat repetitive strategy of blowing up moderate strength fleets, grinding up to larger ones, and occasionally dumping a giant cargo block onto some forsaken planet. I couldn't say exactly what's missing, perhaps industry will help elucidate things, or more random bounty type missions. Looking forward to it.
I would also say boarding actions are still very griefy, particularly because there is still little to gain from them (rare ships are great, but they rarely come up, and you rarely get them). It would be need to flesh out this system, or at least provide success rate elucidation based on the situation so your more psychologically prepared for RNG griefing. (50% chance of success with 10 ships used, 60% with 100 versus 10 marines, 70% with boarding etc etc)