There’s base building, frigate and fleet management, and better dog fighting and battles. There’s also more guns and mechs and vehicles/more sentinel types to fight. The variety is there but the game is still all about what you make of it in your time playing.

As someone who felt the same for a long time, it's partially fixed but partially still that loop. They've added a lot of variety to that loop also with the last few updates. It definitely adds a bit of life, not so much on the emotion.

It's a money grinding sim for sure. They've added a LOT of content but a bunch of it is gated behind their "expeditions" mechanic. I always get discouraged when I log on and see how much stuff I missed and just can't get because I didn't log on between x and y dates. Even the things you can buy if you missed an expedition have their own monetary system where you're limited by missions which are occasionally still bugged to hell.

I read an article that said, yes they are.

They've been adding gameplay for years. Maybe you should actually take a look and see.

You can dogfight with pirates or slug it out with monsters to harvest loot, and there are stealth missions around Sentinel pillars. Though if you want constant quests and action, you might prefer a different game.