The tutorial is quite long. After you have a ship, you can abandon the questline and just do whatever you want.

Requires reading the wiki a lot, but it lets you do whatever you want.

Gunship battles with aliens on the surface? ✅ Dogfights with pirates in orbit? ✅ Arbitrage and space merchant trading? ✅ Planet exploration and flora/fauna identification? ✅ Base building? ✅