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.
No game is for everyone but here’s some ideas to enjoy it more. It sounds like you never really got to the call to adventure.
The core quest will not reveal itself until you survive after take off for 20minutes. Even then there isn’t really a explicitly stated goal. Let your curiosity guide you, read all dialogue, especially the translations bits and just enjoy exploring, you are a space archaeologist. If you have trouble finding a place to start I would recommend using your signal scope and chasing one of those signals. This is a game about exploring and gathering information about a mystery, the reason people are so particular about spoilers is because there’s nothing gating your progress except your own knowledge, if you know the final puzzle you can ‘beat’ the game in like 2 minutes. the only save state the game has is your ships computer that stores the clues you have uncovered so far. Also if you got the DLC I would recommend disabling it or ignoring it until you complete the main story.