You're right, screw the Discovery premise. Discovery sucks anyway.
Still, nobody's done an openworld 3x Roleplaying game at sea before that I'm aware of. No submarines, no WWII ships, no Ironclads, no Wooden Ships and Iron Men. Everything is always in outer space.
there is a FL server where you start as a planetary pilot, I only saw their vid, haven't tried it, and I am not sure how the modding works... but I think it might be nice