Robette: Just hijacking this thread since I just finished Outer Wilds: how ungrindy can you make No Man's Sky (both through options and mods) without breaking the gameplay loop by removing everything that's supposed to keep you occupied?
Uh... the question doesn't make much sense. NMS has no real goal, it's a sandbox. There are two questlines, there is race to the center of the galaxy you could do the mundane way, or as a part of said questlines. I guess you could be done with the quests in 10 or 30 hours and without a lot of grinding. Only thing that remains is the "grindy" stuff. Upgrade your ship to S class, get a living ship, get all the recipes, learn all the words from all languages, setup a farm to craft multiple fusion ignitors and stasis devices per day for loads of money... Over the years I spent some 350 hours doing grindy sandboxy sfuff (quests are still left unfinished), and it didn't feel boring, or needed any mods.