A number of these space games you really need a group to play with I feel just to get any fun out of them.

I have over 80 hours in elite dangerous but I don't really recall the game. It gets reparative rather fast on and like most o these space games it takes a while to travel around. It does have a massive map and people do take many month journeys to the center of the galaxy Sagittarius A. While forget how 100% accurate it is to the Milky Way I think that is what the map is based on.

With that in mind that does leave things rather empty. Which tends to be the issue for most of these games in how fast of a universe they create. No Man's Sky comes to mind for that. Granted I've not check in on that in some time. That is more meant for solo play and just exploring or it was.

I found something like X Rebirth just not to my taste with less than 10 hours in that. To many glitches in the game.

Something like Space Rogue is similar to FTL expect your choices have more control over you fate. Also once you get the ball rolling depending on the settings you selected it can take a few thins to go very wrong to lose. (disclamer I've never played FTL I just have not gotten around to it this is based on what I've been told and seen of FTL myself). It is a solo game and maps tend to last only a couple of hours.

It all really depends on what your looking for. You got things like Stellaris that are more about building up an empire and fleet.

Than you have stuff like Space Engineers where you are mining asteroids and trying to survive where it's like got that Minecraft feel kinda but much harder.