After playing this a bit more this weekend, I have a few more things to add.
I won't cover bugs, or instability or missing features since it's alpha, mostly about gameplay decisions, and how the game feels when it works.
If I can resume, I'll it's strangely satisfying but ultimately tedious and boring. Whether some of this is going to change from now to release(lol) I don't know.
If I had to compare the pacing of the game, I would compare it to Death Stranding.
In DS you pick packs, and then deliver then to your destination, just walking (not talking about BTs and Mules), it sounds very boring, but there is something fun about it, you're constantly doing something in DS from selecting your path to keeping your balance, there's not really a moment where you're not actively involved in the simple act of walking to your destination. In SC, to do something similar like delivering cargo, you'll spend the majority of your time doing nothing, and I mean literally NOTHING, as in NO input from you at all, you just stare at the screen twiddling your thumbs, or going AFK and watching YouTube videos about what other you should be playing instead.
I'm not sure if that's something that will change either, I think that's how it is designed to work. Maybe I'm wrong and they'll add stuff to do, maybe while in QT you'll have to monitor engines, shields, power etc...and make adjustments creating something similar to DS feel of always doing something while just walking, always making decisions.
That's doing cargo hauling, but doing bounties and other more action oriented missions isn't that different either. You need to fly where the mission is, and that's doing NOTHING again, obviously the payoffs of space fighting is a lot of fun and a lot of action...but the problem is getting there.
There's simply way too much downtime where you do nothing in the game, without exaggeration a typical hour of cargo hauling is probably 45 minutes of being mostly AFK or very limited input.
Now you might think that doing action oriented mission will be more active and more fun, and it is in some ways, but you still spend too much time traveling with NO or very limited input. Now understand this, and this is actually more fun if you suck at space battle, this is the epitome of bad game design. The thing is if you're really good at the game and have a great ship, the space battle end quickly so you're back to QT to your next destination increasing the amount you spend traveling in your 1 hour session, if like me you suck and have a bad ship, the space battle last much longer, so in my hour I'll spend more time doing space battle than traveling because I'm slow to kill my targets.
If they ever manage to release this, unless there's major design philosophy changes, it will be a niche game at best. I think similar to Death Stranding though, if you like what it offers, you might have a great time.
Right now, I'm more interested in the Squadron 42 single player which based on the fun that is piloting ships, I can see the single player story driven game be a lot of fun. Based on the lawsuit with Crytek where Crytek is asking to dismiss their own case so they can refile it later based on stuff they discovered about Squadron 42..it looks like Squadron 42 is set to release in 2020.