Agreed, I think when everyone heard the number of planets, it’s was like eeegh I don’t think that will work.

Fwiw it might work if you flew from planet to planet, and you for example got a distress call from a random planet nearby to help settlers against mercenaries and the like. So that it happened on your way to another planet and gave you a reason to stop your ship and go down, check it out and help. and every once in a while you stumble on a unique one with story to it.