I have about 100 hours into it. NMS has pretty much every mechanic you could imagine, but they’re shallow and become repetitive fast and there’s almost zero overlap between them. That doesn’t mean it’s bad, but definitely temper your expectations.

For example: there’s an entire quest line about growing your own plants and refining them into expensive items that you can trade for millions of credits. These plants have grow times of 16 real life hours so you can really only cash in once every real life day.

You can also just teleport between a few galaxies buying low and selling high to generate infinite money in a couple hours. If getting lots of money is your goal, then that quest line is a waste of time. You have to enjoy the act of searching the galaxy for seeds of rare plants and building out a huge farm for no other reason then it’s fun. Most of the game is like this.

There’s no reason to collect the bones of ancient species, or to farm asteroids for rare minerals, or to investigate derelict freighter ships, other than it’s a fun way to pass the time.