I think you got stuck in a strange cul-de-sac. That was apparently more common in early versions of the game -- you can end up on a procedurally generated planet that sucks. I'm at something like 10-20 hours, and it has been a steady ramp of cool stuff and rapidly learning different corners of the game the entire time.
I've started to figure out the language, karma and trade subsystems (and crafting), and have mostly mastered mining, long term survival in hostile environments and interplanetary travel. I ignored the personal and spacecraft combat stuff, because I haven't needed yet (running away has worked so far).
Anyway, I just got teleportation and interstellar travel, and suspect a lot more stuff is going to open up soon.
This is all in the initial mission, which I think is a tutorial.
See, when I played it, I bailed not too far past the point where it seems like you are, when I realized that nope, there actually isn't that much more there to enjoy if you find the basic gameplay to be a grind, which I do. (I despise 1st person resource gathering, and mostly dislike 1st person games in general. (I'm prone to motion sickness, and they're a big trigger.)
It quickly became obvious that it was a fairly small amount of actual content basically painted different colors at random. Once the illusion fails, it failed HARD, at least for me.
I've started to figure out the language, karma and trade subsystems (and crafting), and have mostly mastered mining, long term survival in hostile environments and interplanetary travel. I ignored the personal and spacecraft combat stuff, because I haven't needed yet (running away has worked so far).
Anyway, I just got teleportation and interstellar travel, and suspect a lot more stuff is going to open up soon.
This is all in the initial mission, which I think is a tutorial.