Nice!
How is it in terms of loot, missions, exploration?
I have seen plenty of reviews but they are a bit vague. I would love to be able to go out there in some place, kill some NPC ships, loot stuff, craft, upgrade, etc. Either in a mission or not.
For starters, it's kind of slow. Which suits me well but is not for everyone.
You mention three things, and I do find myself thinking at times "what shall I do now?".
If I choose 'loot', that would be 'shoot a ship, see what drops out', which can be cargo or material for engineers to make little upgrades to your ship. Dropped cargo is a slow way to make money and you never know if it's valuable. Shooting ships is more profitable for the rewards you get for shooting wanted ships or ships in war zones.
Loot implies combat, which is slow paced but can be over in seconds - chance may confront you with something way overpowered. Part of the 'dangerous' in the title is to know, even though most of the game is relaxed, to decide in a second to run, drop heat sinks or brake hard. Combat can also give duels lasting ten minutes of speed/direction and power management.
Other loot is from crashed ships on planets. Again, not a sure way to make money. But a good way to be a tourist.
Missions come mostly in the forms of transport something or shoot something or buy something and bring it back. There's a fair amount of variation in the details and the way you can perform them. Like when I found out I can get 'kill this many ships of faction X' by going to one of those faction's planet bases and drop my anti-ship proximity mines, which gently drift down to the base and then explode destroying all its 'skimmers', a kind of base protection drones. Probably not how Frontier intended it, hehe.
Passenger missions are a special kind of cargo missions with one or a number of waypoints, pays fairly well once your rep with a faction is OK. I still haven't figured out how to give my VIP his ton of fish when he asks for it.
Exploration is my specialty because I get relaxed by repetitive tasks after a day of work. It consists of going to a system you haven't visited before, press a button to collect basic data and locations of the bodies there, and then picking some to scan in detail by getting up close and just looking at it for half a minute. If it's an airless rock, you can land on it and drive around and collect minerals for various functions like car fuel, ship jump range improving fuel and repairs.
A big attraction for me is being the first to scan bodies. When you bring the data home, you then get your name on it. Exploring is a repetitive endurance thing that leads to people posting lots of screenshots, trying to find a gas giant/ice ball/rock/... bigger/hotter/closer/... than any others and bragging about time and distance travelled. Along with tragic stories of ship loss, when the repetitive, calm, sameish nature has once again lead to complacency and catastrophic close-ups with a white dwarf or coming in too fast while landing. Weeks or months of work are lost this way. The 'dangerous' part hides most of the time, but will come out at unexpected times. This game does not care about your skill level.
