The new player experience sucks, but once you get over the initial UI weirdness you'll see the core gameplay mechanics. It mostly revolves around gathering resources, building ships and parts for them, configuring them to counter pve enemies, get more loot, get more resources, and keep on upgrading. You can join a legion to get an accelerated start. Game has kept me playing for over 6 months.
In game chat is mainly in chinese, but there's an active english speaking community at https://discord.gg/hq65cz4