It has a lot of potential! I ended up not loving some aspects of the late game in Alpha 17, but I'll still be picking it up for another run in Alpha 19.
Because this game has been in "Alpha" for so long I think the community has gotten too used to it. They kinda accept it as is and the devs lack a solid direction, adding features without streamlining.
Seems like that's a common symptom of Early Access games. It does look like they're adding a real tutorial in the next patch though, so hopefully they're trying to polish the game a bit. Maybe I've started playing at the perfect time!
It loads quickly and is very stable. It drops a couple of frames when tabbing in and out, especially when recording, but that didn't bother me. I also noticed a couple of very minor bugs with the inventory/storage system. There were no crashes, nothing game-breaking, overall a smooth ride. Just bear in mind that my ship isn't very large or complicated yet.