Cutting off a whole amount of 40 systems from the mod entirely while aiming for the least possible damage in Lore and ongoing RolePlay and the least possible amount of loss of players leaving the community because of it must be done perfectly well and requires a huge amount of time, effort, dedication, attention, there are a lot of things, little details I'd expect a whole Dev Team to think through thoroughly and carry out precisely, but not a single person, such as yourself. If it is possible at all...
Tl;dr - Your idea sounds near impossible to be done without a lot of damage, but if it is possible, you aren't one of those who I'd trust to plan it out and implement it.