I do love this game and its previous title a lot, but coming back to this after so long hasn't changed much in terms of needing to grind forever and savescum through overlevelled fights you're not expecting. And an unupgraded ship gets fucking destroyed by any random pirate encounters that you can happen upon from any ship travelling, but at least you can run away from those easier.
But I can appreciate there's more varied normal-ish encounters added in like the scavvers. For all the areas with alien and anthro species mixed together in the towns/cities, there was a big lack of furry or human/hybrid encounters in a lot of the maps. It feels a bit more balanced out now.