Hnnng!
Multi-tiered generational sandbox open-world RogueLike where your humble beginnings can cycle between exploring alien worlds; building, raiding, and trading with settlements (actual livestock and NPCs, quality-based proc-gen items); all the way up to building, hijacking, and buying your first of many ships - all the better to wage interplanetary war with.
Stick to the fringe worlds and try your luck. Maybe those pig ranchers in Marcius 7-B didn't realize their livestock are dying due to a xeno-plague, or toxic leakage from an abandoned spacefarer base. Perhaps the Dictat tested a new type of nuclear weapon here. Investigating it may save the world from depopulation: ensuring you can colonize there, trade goods continue flowing, migrants continue breeding, and the Dominion will recompense you for your efforts. When sensors and drones can't do the job, a lander and well-armed crew might do it. Or maybe this should be a one-man job and you just happened to be there. Either way, you've got plenty of options. Sell that sensor data to the highest bidder, anonymously upload it to the Etherweb and watch the ensuing political mess envelop the galaxy, or go into roguelike mode and explore room-for-room, tile-for-tile.
...Or maybe its a trap and you just haven't realized it yet. You've been dispatched to Marcius 7-B on a suicide mission to shut you up. Remember Joaqum D. Vajrani, sector governor of the Dominion, whose youngest daughter you deflowered way back when? Who cares that you were once married: he's still got a bone to pick with you.
Turns out he ordered the strike as a show of force. What better way to keep the rowdy civilians in check than the fear of thermonuclear war and a common enemy? Not to mention the coincidental presence of an unregistered bunker near the suspiciously undermanned Dominion outpost that got nuked.
Hmm, I wonder what's so incriminating that was worth hiding in a nuclear irradiated zone? Official records never did mention any bunker...
I'm sure rival factions would pay a hefty sum for legitimate proof of their crimes. Can anyone say casus belli and an honorary position? Blackmail is always an option, until the death squads lock in on your position. Then again, if your actions lead to the dethroning of that prick Joaquim, and eventual destruction of the Dominion, there will be no one left to track you down.
Options and consequences.
If you ever need to take a break from hunting spess pirates and wait for that Sindrian Dictat-Dominion war to blow over, just settle down on some backwater planet and start an outpost. Play as a roving spacefarer mercenary intent on screwing up the planetary balance of power. Use your wealth to buy a village, hire mercs, or beguile some foo's into making you their leader. Buy or forge a new ID and pretend to be someone whose reputation won't spike interest. Just be sure to bring a new ship, or spoof your transponder and repaint the hull. Even a fringeworld Dictat rancher would be suspicious that John Robert Brand, "humble space merchant", showed up in a next-generation cloak frigate of Dominion construction. Hmmm... Anything worth hiding is worth something to someone. When the next Dictat escort comes in with the Taxman, I'm sure that backwater rancher might find it worthwhile to mention what he saw.
Options and consequences.
Or, if you don't like the challenge of sim'ing and micromanaging early on, ignore it altogether and stick to hauling goods from overworld to overworld. Civilized core-worlds and faction worlds have spaceports to facilitate major trade zone operations. Make enough to buy your first shifty combat vessel and never look at a dirty urbworld trade zone again, except to offload your l00t, hire mercenary officers, and take on assassination/capture/subterfuge missions from whichever criminal scumbag or self-righteous official may be offering.
Or,
Tip the balance of power; become a double or triple-agent; wield a mighty battlefleet for the highest bidder, or take on a Commission for the faction of your choosing; worst comes to worst, you can always start your own faction - or, even cooler, raise the banner of one of countless homebrew RNG factions championed by various social groups. Maybe the liberation movement of the Altaraxian-born Outer Rim Vanguard has a message your can stand behind. Perhaps you found God in the twilight of endless space. You could always pick whoever seeks to control a world or sector you've been eyeing all along...
...I'm sure the Outer Rim Vanguard, Subterran Worker's Party, or Cult of Luminous Aether could become a major faction with your fleet at their side. Hell, they might even make your their leader. Or, you could always plan a coup...
All this and more can be possible in...
StarSector: UnReal World!
(Glad I got all those coding manuals for my birthday last week. Been planning to make something like this for years now. Every game has some of this, but no one has all 3: surface-world, planetary overworld, and inter-system/galactic theaters. Eventually you get tired of rummaging through the foliage, or blowing up pirates, or strengthening major faction #3 with the nice capital ships but no continuity. I'd kill to be able to build/buy/steal a ship and fuck off to the stars in UnRealWorld/RimWorld, or settle down as a wealthy uranium baron in StarSector, or start my own faction and usurp entire worlds/systems/quadrants. Then, when I get tired of that, I can jump back into space as my son and remind the galaxy why their grandparents feared the Black Phoenix Coalition.
...Or, watch my worlds get invaded by space marines or bombarded from orbit after so many years of peace. Woops!)