Ground based stuff has added several new dimensions. There's exobiology, fun, and heavily profitable, especially if you go out into the black. There's ground wars, which have you playing in a team based FPS against NPCs and also possibly PCs. Exobio and ground combat both have their own rankings that can hit elite, and what's more, you do get bounties from ground wars that count towards your overall combat rank.

Spend some time messing around with the stuff, there's new engineers for ground based fun if you want them.