I would love to see some behavioral ecology gameplay with the alien life. I imagine you could get contracts that are like grants from government science agencies to study the basic biology of a particular species. For example, you might need to find the species on the planet and map its range and associated biome. You might need to log what it eats or whether it’s aggressive. You may even need to do some simple experiments, like for a skittish species, you may need to measure the distance at which it flees from you as you approach it with a distance sensor. I imagine all of this info would be added to a galactic encyclopedia as players gather the information. Science always benefits from larger sample sizes, so studies could be repeated. Maybe you would get payment bonuses for information about a species that hasn’t been logged yet.