there's not much to do other than gather resources in order to upgrade your ship which lets you explore more, which is what i do. i love exploring in this game. it seems a lot of people complain about how they played it for 2 hours and everything looks the same. 2 hours isn't enough to upgrade your warp drive to tier 5 and reach the most distant star systems.
everyone starts out in a yellow system, and if you just book it to the center without exploring or going off the beaten path, it's all just yellow systems, which look more or less the same. you can't even reach the other 8 system types without upgrading the warp drive.
but yeah, it's still just exploring. some (most?) people seem to find that tedious as fuck, i love it. i keep coming across weird and wonky places.