The core game is exactly what they intended it to be.
Wait, it was supposed to have terrible combat?
The game mechanics feel like a facsimile of a good game, like someone looked at other games and put their features on a feature list without understanding anything about them, delivering half-assed or plain misaimed takes on those features.
Combat: Point at something and hold the trigger. Maybe sidestep the half-hearted attacks but never feel any danger (unless large enemy numbers in space combat, then you're either geared enough and frequently throw new fuel into the shield generator or you die). And did you notice that it has a CoD-style hit indicator but shows it no matter whether you hit an enemy or a wall?
Mining: All those rare resources just thrown at the surface. No real need to explore, if it's present on the planet it's right in front of you. The only reason you aren't always loaded with everything you need is the limited inventory space. But unlike Factorio you can't simply set up a mining system to gather all those exposed materials.
Survival: Just top up the bar regularly with resources that are literally everywhere. No need to ration your food or take special precautions for specific situations, just universal standard fuel that's so abundant the biggest challenge is operating the menu.
Upgrades: Just linear buffs to your existing abilities. Never changes the gameplay except bars go down slower or faster. No different challenges to attain them either, it's just a matter of grinding samey interactions to get the blueprints and then shooting enough rocks to get the materials. Compare e.g. Terraria where some materials are mined and some are only gained from combat with the latter differing a lot depending on what you are looking for.
Exploration: While technically every place is different because it's random they all feel the same, follow the same structure and are composed of the same familiar elements. And there's no real need to look deeply into a planet because everything is visible up front minus maybe the vortex cubes. Also the need to return to your ship discourages just randomly exploring things anyway (and I never find a ship calling interface when I need one...). You should always fly your ship to where you're going to look at things and it costs so much plutonium to launch that you don't want to do random exploration.
Trade: Sure, prices go up and down a little but 1. you can't find planetary trade spots again (except those multi-platform ones) so you cannot make trade routes (also you cannot find old systems again easily so inter-stellar trade is even worse) and 2. the amounts you can buy are so small that you won't make any significant profits compared to the cash you need for the only major money sink, buying bigger ships.
Ship types: Different races' ships come with different standard gear but reconfiguring that is so simple and bog standard (and often necessary because of adjacency bonuses) that any flavor goes out the window within seconds... if you can even tell what kind of theme the ship had going on in the first place.