Imagine if this game had actually let you be a Pathfinder and World Build.

I've said in several threads how much I was disappointed in the fact that they built up this whole Pathfinder thing, but by the time you got there planets were already settled, first contacts had already been made, etc.

Imagine this:

You arrive on the Nexus, brand new cluster, and you're allowed to go down, first boots on the ground period as far as Initiative is concerned.  You do things like scan the water, ground, minerals, and access the planet for the best places the put outposts and start colonies.  Then the survival of said colony depends on how well you did it.

You could have had a set finite amount of resources to start and you have pick how much of your military units go in which outpost, where your scientists go, and the viability of your colonies goes up or down depending on these decisions because putting scientists int he right places may speed up development of new tech based on what was studied where, or a colony may fail because you a colony in a place with a heavy Kett presence and didn't put enough military there.

This way mining and scanning things would have purpose for developing your colonies.  Which cryo pods you open would have a purpose in game, not just to get your characters some perks.  Quests could have been tied to doing specific things for your colony, or to build alliances, acquiring resources you need to manage.

The more resources and research you get, the more colonies you can start as you go through the planets.  You could still have revolts and people who go into exile, you could have still had the vaults and the Kett involved on some worlds.  But you would not have needed the whole terra forming aspect because you would be increasing the viability of your colonies through your actions. The vaults could have done something else.

You could have made first contacts and negotiated areas for your people to go.  Maybe have to chose sides between two races, make alliances for protection on a world and not have to use your resources.  But then, maybe this this bars you from having a colony on another world with a race that has some tension with the one you allied with.  They could then open up quests designed to bring those people together in some way.

You could have still had everything with your dad go down the same on the first mission, and everything with your brother be the same.  Still discover remnant tech on worlds, you just would have had a bigger role in the actually studying and finding good places for people to settle in Andromeda.

Just my thought on it, feel free to disagree.