@Matheld: Thanks once again for the feedback! I think you've got some good ideas. Generally, I think of the planetary conditions as the colony affects associated with the operations, but I see where you're coming from. It's not a 1 to 1 relationship, after all. Still, my intention for the planetary operation sites is for them to be too small/minor to be of any real consequence to a colony, and changing that would be pretty huge. I do really like the idea of making it possible for colonies to manage/automate operations. That could prevent situations where a player might feel compelled to visit one of their colonies periodically just to perform operations, and it just makes a lot of sense. I'll see if I can figure out a good way to make that work.
Or even just remove some operations as you develop your colony. Since building a mining industry would probably go ontop of the ore deposits that exist via the planetary operations
I did consider doing something like that, but in the end I figured it would be best not to have any downsides to colonization like that, especially if I don't have a good way to make people aware of it. It's also an interpretation of realism that some people might not share (e.g. it might be more economical for a proper mining operation to ignore scattered outcrops in favor of high-density ore veins, even if the outcrops don't require special infrastructure)
Is there a way to make bounties and stuff spawn closer to the core? I like the idea of making the edges more mysterious by making it harder to get out there, but the illusion is kind of ruined when every small-time pirate is chilling out there (and people still expect me to go all the way out there and get them for like 50k credits).
I don't know of any way to do that without overwriting the game's code. The game does prefer to spawn bounties closer to the center, but not so much that the number of options is too limited. My suggestion would be to increase the actual size of the sector a bit (not too much, as it can have a dramatic affect on performance). You can do that by editing /starsector-core/data/config/settings.json or using a mod like
Random Assortment of Things or
Adjusted Sector. For best results you'd want to start a new game with the new settings.