Yes it's better than last time, as most parts of the game seem to be based on Freelancer(including the sounds
) why not make it more like it. I.e. between each planet there are maybe 10-20trade lanes and pirates can pull you off them(using awesome hacking skills aka shooting the lanes) however the difference would be that after a certain amount of time(till it activates again) you can escape, or if the lane is close to a planet maybe police come in and help you. You could also make the game fun by making it so that you could be a pirate as well.
The main thing you could currently change I guess is adding more items and more variation between them as there currently isn't a lot to do.
Lastly, I forgot to mention this earlier but the game uses all remaining resources of the CPU that's in use by the game which slows down other applications and many other things, you could fix this with VSync, Sync Off, Sleep EX etc.