When thinking of space games with limited graphics, the first thing that comes to mind is ASCII Sector.
But the Star Control 2: The Ur-Quan Masters (or whatever it's name is now) gets my strongest recommendation. And Starsector looks inspired by it, so I'll have a look!
starsector deserves so much more popularity. 10/10 would cause the collapse of civilization using hyperillegal ai cores that accelerated the collapse in the first place while getting blackmailed by those self same ai cores again