Proviso - some of the following will be down to the base game, some FL design decisions / implementation, some down to my gameplay approach, and some down to the intersect of all three - not all of the following should be taken as criticism of FL. This is more feedback on how my playstyle and FL have interacted to date and how I've felt as a result.
tldr - damn the start is slow
Positives - I really like the writing, it's a cut above that in any other X game. I like the exploration system (some of it has echoes of Eve). I like the HQ. No bugs experienced!
Negatives - damn the start is slow, that Boron (which must be a base Egosoft "asset" by now) is like the Satan spawned love child of Jar Jar Binks and Claptrap. I think the only X character more annoying is called Yisha.
Current Status
Trading secondary resources isn't worth it because the a) the demand is so limited and b) the risks of ending up with a cargo hold of unsellable wares is too high (along with the corresponding risk of tying up your capital that way).
I've made one small crystals trade. Other than that it's sit there and wait for the price of e-cells to hit 12 (because why wouldn't you, the resource is limited, the sell price is basically capped, so you might as well max your upside and limit your effort). Which means a lot of time sat there on max SETA doing nothing.
Which is boring.
Suggestions:-
1. Give each start half a dozen advanced satellites. It would provide a marginal uplift to early game trading, give the player something else to do for a bit, and also form a useful part of the "tutorial". (The capital cost early game to purchase them yourself, even though it might facilitate trading higher value products like bogas etc, is too high. Better just to bull through the pain...).
1a. 1 above may be enough to alleviate it, but if not perhaps provide marginally more trading opportunities in the starting area. A single basic shield fab and a single cheap weapon fab, and any resulting requirement for an additional SPP, would provide more consumption for ore, silicon and bofu etc.
2. Don't give missions eg passenger transport missions that simply can't be run. It just dissuades the player from looking at missions later in the game. "You're taught the wrong lesson".
I am confident I am going to enjoy it when I get through this pain point, but as of 7.5 hours played (probably over half of which is sat there doing nothing with SETA on), I'm hella bored.