Thanks for asking a question and not immediately bashing my opinion! It’s not a common response I get with this game.
For me, SC as a space sim offers more of the “sim” than any other game. For example, my recent favorite gameplay loop is being a rescue medic. I have a cutlass red, which is red, has ambulance-like lights, and a med bay. I get kitted up with red armor, healing supplies and tools, and lots of extra food and water. Plus a few guns because whatever injured people is likely going to try to get me too.
Once all the shopping is done, I load up my cutlass red and wait for someone to submit a rescue beacon. (they can do this when rendered unconscious with a single key press) Once I get one, I speed over (I have equipped a very inefficient but very fast warp drive) and extract them or heal them on the spot if possible, and clear out any enemies in the mean time.
This is some of the most satisfying and rewarding gameplay I’ve ever experienced. Because it’s not a level someone designed, it’s pure emergent gameplay with extremely heavy simulation roots. There is no teleporting in and out of ships. Every door in the ship has a little button I have to press to open it. I have to stay hydrated. The little things add to it. It all comes together to make some of the best content I’ve ever experienced.
And the people I save are genuinely grateful. It takes time and effort to buy a whole new set of armor and weapons and such, so I’m saving them all that time and money, and while obviously not as impactful as actually saving a life, it makes it much much more gratifying than, say, resurrecting someone in planetside or squad or something.
That’s just one type of gameplay. But the principle is the same with other gameplay loops. It’s the most in-depth space simulation I can get right now. Sure, some other games are more polished, have better ship combat, run better (okay ALL of them run better), etc. But none of them have everything that SC does, with the level of realism that SC does, with the in-instance ship interiors that SC does.
As far as buying ships goes, honestly I just like big ships. I used to climb on tractors when I was a little kid. They were so much bigger than me and just looking at them filled me with a sense of awe. This game does the same. I have spent quite a bit on it over the years, but only $10 or $30 here and there, to upgrade existing ships to others. You can trade in ships for other ships, melt them down for store credit, use that to get different ships. I’ve had so many ships just from swapping them around and every time I spend money it’s just the price of ordering out, for a lot more enjoyment than I’d get from a pizza. It eventually added up to several hundred dollars and it was personally worth it for me to feel that amazing feeling of exploring what is essentially a mobile skyscraper or a hot rod or an ambulance or a fortress of destruction. You can earn most of these in game as well. But it’s easier to get that dopamine hit immediately for the price of an unhealthy meal haha. Now that I have that much money invested, it’s still “liquid” in that I can melt down my ships at any time and basically buy any currently purchasable ship immediately with no additional money spent.
Edit: since you mentioned community, the SC community is pretty like-minded. The people I save often go on to be my friends and play with me sometimes. Everyone is very nice. The most toxicity I ever see are people who join the game and shit on it, while insulting everyone else who plays it, then most likely leave and uninstall. These are people who think the game is a scam, maybe they’re original kickstart backers who are just mad about the game or even just bought it to ride on the hate train. (being mad after backing the kickstarter is a valid stance, but I’m not going to get into that here. The only invalid stance is believing other people shouldn’t enjoy the game.) The people who ACTUALLY play it regularly already know what they’re getting into. They have no illusions about what this game is, and because of that they end up being one of the most welcoming communities of any game I’ve played. Everyone’s just here to have fun with cool space ships and each other.
Disclaimer: I agree that SC is a burning pile of spaghetti code that will likely never be finished. I agree that they made promises in the kickstarter that they did not fulfill. I know you can buy thousands of dollars worth of in-game ships for an incomplete game. It will likely never finish. Yet I still play the game. And it’s really fun! Come play with me some time :)