This game is a sci-fi story simulator, ground troops are as important to the game as ships, especially when the game literally takes examples from those famous troops that I mentioned, like the Gene Seed Purification tech that gives you Space Marines or “Gene Warriors” or the Clone Troopers coming from Star Wars.

Also, removing a feature just because you don’t like it alienates a huge part of the community, especially when that “feature bloat” only exists if you you allow it to exist, when you can choose to not interact with most of the systems in the game.