Crash Landing places, Say you are in a fight with pirates in space but and they get your ship down to critical health. The engines start to go and you have to try and make a crash landing on a nearby planet. It would play out exactly like the beginning of the game sort of. Have you enter the atmosphere and lose slight control of your ship, having to guide it down to a place to crash land. Then when you hit the ground you begin the quest of having to repair it.

This would set up a fun and natural narrative for adventure and exploration as it may force you to go to planets you would normally pass up. If pirates shot you down you could even have a timer until they come and search for your wreckage to finish you off and take your cargo. You could make it so you need to hide your crash site so they do not spot you too.

Infected Frigates, add the possibility that some of your frigates come back from missions “infected” like the derelict frigates you can find floating in space. Forcing you to go investigate what happened to the crew of your frigate and cleansing the infection upon reach some sort of core. I think it if balanced right it could make things a little more interesting and adventure oriented in that department.

Amphibious Tanks Exocraft, For the longest time I have wanted to have a tank exocraft with treaded tires. Something akin to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-9uzLBtMtY. Make it so you can go through water on the surface but just very slowly like the amphibious tanks the military uses. A tank like that would just be fun to bounce through desert biomes and swamps.

Hive Mind Planets, Infected planets that have turned into giant living super organisms. Meaning that whenever you attack or mine something on this planet that is “infected” the entire ecosystem trys to kill you. Like it is trying to remove an infection or virus. I got this idea from a long time favorite sci fi game Unreal 2. In the game you land on a planet that has had life on it all fuse into a single organism that now covers the entire planet. From the game: “Acheron is the strangest planet in the sector. It’s a T-class world where the surface is covered by a single gigantic organism. Izanagi Corporation is slowly killing the creature as it terraforms the planet. The Izanagi forces have converged on a single dig site–perhaps an artifact has been found.”

I suggest having these infected planets in some systems, when landing on one you have to make your way to the center of the planet through a cave/dungeon that spawns on the surface. Once you reach the core you can destroy it which will make everything on the planet stop trying to kill you and become passive or normal towards you. Also have the planets shoot off infected “pods” to nearby worlds. When the pod hits the world it creates a biome of the infected planet which the player can use as a quest starting point to track down the infected planet. Also have more infected biomes spawn unless the planet core is destroyed.

Distant Smoke, Have billowing smoke off in the distance or other interesting phenomena that lures the player to investigate. Like the smoke from a station that was recently raided by pirates, a downed freighter etc.

Self Destruct Button for Derelict Freighters, When you encounter a derelict freighter give the option to self destruct it at the end forcing the player to have to race back to the entrance through all the danger before the countdown expires. This would make the experience a lot more fun and an exciting way to end the encounter.