FTL is actually extremely well balanced, while Cosmonautica is not.
Of course the balancing is also at very different points.
In FTL it is important that all weapon systems and so on have their use but also none of them is 100% mandatory and cannot replaced by others.
But the balancing in Cosmonautica is more considering missions and trade routes. And these are extremely bad balanced. Regarding weapon systems and so on you hardly have a choice anyways. So I wouldn't talk about balancing at that point.
Regarding crashes…yeah. The game is not the most stable one. I would say that I get one crash in about 3 hours average. That isn't horrible, but also not really good.
The good thing however is that the game automatically saves everywhere. So all you lose is 1 minute to restart and load the game and maybe 30-60 seconds of game time.
Regarding the Price: The normal price is 15€, but it should have a reduction, which it doesn't have due to a mistake of steam or the developer.
On gog.com it has the correct price of 11.59€
And on their homepage it costs 12.74€, but there it also includes the Android version.
http://cosmonautica.com/getit.html
In any way, the price range of 11-15€ is only worth it, if you play and enjoy the campaign - but it's still not a great deal. If you only play the sandbox mode however, you will be bored after maybe 4-6 hours and then it's definitely not worth it.
Oh, and one more thing: In comparison to FTL it also has 0 replay value. The game is extremely simple and it's very unlikely to get stuck. The game autosaves, but I guess if you "die", you just get a setback, and need to buy a cheaper ship or take a credit. But it's not like you are starting over all the time. There also isn't really a learning curve as the combat is trivial (and still badly explained).