I love ED but the thing with it is its quite limited in scope.
About 50 hours to go through all the game play loops and get bored with them. Ok so go out and explore, some interesting stuff out there to see, now the grind starts, grind for an Anaconda, get Anaconda, it needs upgrades, grind for those, it needs engineering, grind some more....
ED:O seems to have taken that to its most extreme, and you suspect its because the space legs potion of it there isn't actually much to do, so in FDev's mind to get you to spend the hours in the game is they make it very difficult for you if you encounter enemy on your settlement missions, its made very clear to you that you have to upgrade your gear, so make the grind for that extreme, and its backfired, people don't think "oh i'm going to spend the next 100 hours upgrading my crap so i can survive getting jump on by 12 NPC's with engineered shields and weapons" they think this is broken and they are not going to fix it.
I actually wrote on the ED forums that they need to look at their balancing with this, but its not that, its very deliberate, i once spent 2 hours on a roof with unengineered shields and weapons trying to fight 16 NPC's half on them with level 3 shields and weapons, an utter cluster #### i killed 7 in 2 hours before eventually the grenade spamming got me.
And the thing is if you're raiding or defending or repairing its really all the same thing on the same sometimes differently laid out settlement on the same sometimes different coloured moon. A lot of copy and paste going on.
So (That other space game) is also limited in that way, tho ironically despite still only having one system is still A LOT more varied. But once you've done all of the game play loops that other game has something ED:O doesn't, ships that are not on a rail closed off from anyone but you, i'm not talking about Instancing with your mate and becoming a disembodied camera on his ship, i'm talking about 10 of you piling in to a carrack, gallivanting around the verse boarding other peoples ships, its the mechanics that allow you to do that which adds a mile of depth to the games, its so off the rails and free it allows you to make your own gameplay loops without limit.
And Braben says this will never happen in ED because its boring, No Braben your game is boring and frustrating.