Only do the mining thingy with strategic resources, and only if you are a smuggler.
Do it less if you are another kind of pirate.
I've been playing as balanced so far. Given that my usual (imperial) playstyle is fairly passive, smuggler might be a better pirate route for me to go, I guess. Might give that a shot.
There are about a dozen of us B12'ers who do not regret the purchase but I am sure that there are at least a few who might.
When I first got DW, I only got the vanilla game - and I didn't like it. It took a while for me to stare at Shakturi and Legends and decide that they might add some of what I was subconsciously missing (like directed research - as a Space Empires fan, I longed for that!) I finally splashed out and got both Shakturi and Legends. This improved the game in my eyes to the point where I didn't regret the purchase, but I still wasn't enjoying it as much as potential rival space-strategy games.
I bought Shadows a couple of weeks ago, and I'm now immensely enjoying the pre-warp game. How much of this is due to the features of Shadows (playing as pirates, huzzah!) and how much of it is simply due to the overall game growing on me over time (and me learning the ropes) I really can't decide.
tl;dr - DW vanilla is not, to me, worth its price. DW, Shakturi and Legends are, to me, worth their combined price. DW, Shakturi, Legends and Shadows are, to me, good value for their combined price.