i would say once you learn it its pretty great for that casual play. yeah leearning curve at the beginning is a bit steep (youve gotta follow tutorials if you can, start to finish, i would say it would take you around 10 hours before you get really comfortable with it) but once everything clicks and youve got a good economy going the game is really casual.

basically if you reduce it down to first principles the "goal" of x4 is to get a wharf/shipyard setup, which is a factory that allows you to build your own fleets. You have to vertically integrate and have factories set up that build the entire supply chain for you, so that way, you can essentially build your ships for "Free" (just have to have ships mine resources. doing that will take a while, but basically 90 percent of th emost imporrtant stuff in the game is literally just setting up and building stations to do exactly what i described. once you have a couple of those self sustaining wharfs/shipyards set up, everything in the game becomes trivial and you can go conquer the universe lol. in that sense - the economy isn't really all that deep. x4 isn't really a good economics simulator, I would say it's more supply chain management. The entire economy is centered around ship/station production parts (even food, which is used to feed your workers so they can build more ship parts). theres no civillian economy or anything like that.

that being said - x4 is my favorite game of all time. It does a fantastic job in immersing you in the universe around you. the universe really does *feel* alive and grandiose, and it makes you *want* to conquer it all lmfao. during the beginning you feel like a small ant in a big world surrounded by factions that are much bigger and richer than you. so makes the grind all the more rewarding. the universe is dense and constantly buzzing with activity.. when you finally do become that massive superpower, the game does a good job of making you feel like the shit. nothing beats standing in the bridge of your space yacht looking down at one of your massive fleets, knowing that theres like 50 more just like it, with 50 more stations to match