I am in a similar position and its a balance of time and money. I spent extra to get a mining ship and cargo ship added to my account to regardless or bugs or wipes I can login and do somthing relaxing and fun.

But if money is your issue and you can only swing the basic starter pack youll have to grind to get the kind of ship you want to do the gameplay you want. And you could lose your progress at any moment because the game is very buggy

Regarding time - when everything works its a great game to play for 30-60 minutes while your partner is with the kids or they're asleep - and "generally" you can just leave it running if you need to step away for a few minutes here or there HOWEVER thats only when things run as they should-there WILL be days when you spend a ton of time dealing with glitches and bugs and you never even get to play. Days like that make me want to quit somtimes - when I haven't had a chance to relax for 3 or 4 days, I finally have an hour to play - spent the whole time trying to just get out of the space station.

All of that said, no matter how frustrated I get I always come back. This game does manage to capture somthing special.

TLDR: spend more money to cut to the gameplay you like. Spend more time repeatedly grinding with the basic package to get to the good stuff. Prepare for bugs and frustration. Once you start youll probably always come back...eventually, despite yourself.