The station you are on gets attacked. Go to the concourse and kill the pirates (avoiding the civilians). Back to your ship and out to get the pirate ships attacking the outside.

Will there be non-fighting operations? Collect medicine from a research facility. Go to an installation. Breach security to get in (because it's been locked down). Find all the people in the installation and give them the medicine. Fly out with all the people and take them to the medical facility

Looking forward to it.
Rescue mission. Stealthy creep into an installation to find someone. Once you have them, the alarms go off and you have to fight your way out. Back in your ship for a hot launch and fight/evade the ships coming at you.

Maybe months. But I will have built it, and maybe others will have helped. We will have accomplished something.
Don't take that away with game purchases…

So call it grind, but it's an optional game loop so I call it gameplay. I'm looking forward to hauling for my stations, because it will be my achievement. I don't have much time to play, so maybe my stations will take a while.

It was cool for about 2 weeks, but then I got bored of one-shotting the pirates and there was no point to trading. Game lost its attraction after that….

Then I was really excited to get an editor that allowed me to edit my saved commander file. It allowed me to max my weapons beyond anything I could get in game. I could also max my credits. Maybe some other stuff as well.

I'm happy they have changed to early access. Don't know if that still includes an initial instabuild? I hope not, and here's why...
Let me tell you a little story. Are you sitting comfortably?...
A long time ago I played the original Elite. I played every minute I could for years.
Loved it.