If you pick it up, know that it has a huge modding scene that make an already great game even better. I can recommend a few basic QoL mods if you want, though the 9.0 update is coming soon and will probably break most of them for a while.

Also, the base game has some arbitrary mechanics meant purely to punish the player so an experienced X veteran can’t eclipse and steamroll the in-game factions too quickly. There’s a list of these mechanics (and links to mods that reduce/remove them) here.