A top-down space trading/exploring/combat game that reminds me a fair bit of the mighty Space Rangers 2. That should probably be recommendation enough for a lot of people.

Warpgate

You'll want to play it zoomed out, but that doesn't do justice to the excellent ship models.

You fly around a huge galaxy, completing missions, mining asteroids, buying and selling goods and upgrades and generally trying to avoid fights as much as possible in your puny mining ship. Well, that’s what I’m doing so far. I’d like to make my name as a pirate at some point, I think, but I’m a bit worried that I’ll die horribly if I try.

When you enter combat the screen swirls in an RPG-manner and takes you to another view, where your ship flies around automatically and you press buttons to fire your weapons when they’re ready. There’s an update coming to change things a bit, but while it’s not incredibly interactive it’s fine the way it is now. Just don’t expect to be dog fighting, avoiding enemy fire and using flying skills to take down ships better than your own.