If you keep playing you eventually get more RU through quests than mining the average planet. Or you could shoot aliens, especially trading vessels, for RU. Also, it was not intended for you to mine every planet (that is like robbing every house in Skyrim), only the ones with good resources. Also, during the beta it took me only 40 hours to buy almost everything, do quests for all the major alien races, and finish the story and that was with me doing a lot of pointless grinding low-value planets and not attacking traders and the cost of stuff was much higher during the beta than it is now. I also got bored mining planets for several hours straight, but then I took a break.
If you really want to save many hours of playtime wait until people start posting guides. Just like Star Control II the universe is the same for every player, so people can share where all the good stuff is hidden. Star Control Origins actually relies LESS on guides than Star Control II because it was practically impossible to get all Melnorme upgrades in Star Control II unless you earned all those Melnorme credits by finding all the rainbow worlds. No matter how much you mined regular plantes you could not get those Melnorme upgrades because Melnorme credits are only earned by trading biological data or rainbow world locations. In Star Control Origins you don't have to find rainbow worlds to buy everything.
Stardock is not Blizzard or another AAA company that can have movie-quality cutscenes. Stardock is on a budget, even though this is by far the most money they have ever spent on one of their games. If you did not like the art style you saw in the trailer before buying this game, well I guess you should not have bought this game. Also, cutscenes can get much much worse. Star Control 3's sock puppets during alien dialogue cutscenes are abominations.
