I have just started playing and I enjoy it a lot, already have about 15 hours in. This is after several years of attempting to get into it but disliking it; I think something in my brain has “clicked” and I love it now!

The only major dealbreaker for me right now is the render distance. I have all settings on lowest (despite the one that affects render distance a little higher, but I don’t notice a difference) and consistently get 40-60 fps flying around. If there was a way to sacrifice other settings to improve my render distance even more I would. My favorite thing to do right now on a new planet is to fly around low to the ground exploring, just for a giant trade hub to pop in right in front of me, reaching from bottom to top of my perspective in 1st person, when I would have very obviously been able to see it by then.

Also, space combat is ROUGH. I tried fighting some sentinels and when the freighter came in i was getting maybe 10-20fps. Maybe I need to fly farther away from the planet before I do it but I was already outside of the “load zone” in the atmosphere that straight up freezes my game for 2-3 seconds flying through it.

Any tips appreciated! I have no problems playing other games without this much performance issues but maybe this one is just the most graphically intense out of them all.