Just chiming inm guys. This has been in development since 2011 and its still in Beta? Unless this is a game of DF magnitude, this sounds extremely fishy. Can someone explain what's up with this game?
Short answer: it's a game of DF magnitude.
I'm not sure I'd go quite that far. There's no proc-genned megaships or legends to battle, the "world" isn't truly randomly generated, and of course there are only a small number of different personalities for NPCs. But it certainly is fun.
I played this way back when it was Starfarer and you only had a single system to fly around in. It certainly has expanded nicely in the intervening years.