The moment that inspired this question:
A long time ago I was playing an MMO called Voyage of the Century Online. A major part of the game was sailing around on a galleon ship and having naval battles in the 1600s.
The game basically allowed you to sail around all of the oceans of the 1600s world and explore. The game was populated with a lot of NPC ships that you could raid and pick up its cargo for loot.
One time, I was sailing around the western coast of Africa and I came across some slavers. This was shocking to me at the time, and I was like “oh, I’m gonna fuck these racist slavers up!”
I proceed to engage the slave ship in battle and win. As I approach the wreckage, I’m bummed out because there wasn’t any loot. Like every ship up until this point had at least some spare cannon balls or treasure, but this one had nothing.
… then it hit me. A slave ship’s cargo would be… people. I sunk this ship and the reason there wasn’t any loot was because I killed the cargo. I felt so bad.
I just sat there for a little while and felt guilty, but I always appreciated that the developers included that detail so I could be humbled in my own self-righteousness. Not all issues can be solved with force.
There is an autopilot that isn’t terrible but be careful if the sun is in the way. I didn’t realize there was a boosted jump with the rocket pack for like 30 hours. Seriously looking up the controls would be a good idea.
But to get started I really just recommend fly to a planet and just explore it as long as you can. Take note of what you can’t do and once you feel good just go to a different planet and start again. It doesn’t take much time and you are limited to about 20 minutes anyways.
The game rewards starting again. And sometimes jumping into space without a suit is a fast way to do that. But it is a slow puzzle/exploration game essentially in the vain of Myst so if it’s not for you that’s fine.