I'm thinking about running this game but the last game I picked up involved one rng section combined with a really fast reaction time and it turned me off running it (for now anyway). So does this game have an rng section? And if so, is it a big time waster?

There's one major RNG spot on Phleebhut about 4 minutes in (with Arnoid) that costs maybe 10 seconds per unlucky roll. The random scorpazoid, also on Phleebhut, can be annoying but seldom costly unless you're super-unlucky (there's a very small chance, maybe 2%, that it spawns right on top of you and insta-kills Roger; but if it doesn't do that you very seldom lose more than 1 or 2 seconds). The enemy ships at the end are partly RNG but mostly skill. I think most of the earthquakes on Ortega are also RNG (the first ones are guaranteed); but bad earthquake RNG doesn't cost very much time, especially outside ScummVM/QuanVM where they seem to be slightly longer for some strange reason. Overall, a lot less RNG than Space Quest 1 (and most other early Sierra games) but slightly more than Space Quest 2.