Some of this is valid, and I'm pretty sure both Alex and David are aware of it (new content tends to be released overtuned and get brought to heel after extended playtesting by, you guessed it, us; congrats, you paid a guy to QA his game), but some of this basically boils down to 'I don't like core design features of Star Control-inspired games'.

And, you're gonna find that element disappointing no matter what! Because that's the kind of game this is; it's not a limitless open-world sandbox where you create your own story, it's a universe that's going to have a defined plot and probably also an end, and while Nexerelin and Vayra's Sector and other mods that add a lot of stuff to do on the campaign layer can mask that, it's going to hit some limitations based just on the engine and the ability of one guy + contractors to create that kind of game.

There are some things you can do about that, but I recommend you just sit down and start a design doc for your own game that goes in the direction you want to go. That's a fruitful task. But hoping Starsector will become the open-world sandbox game about war crimes and organlegging that an 'ironic' internet racist told you it was? Well, I guess you could have sunk your life's savings into Star Ctizen, but, it's the same category error.