In the big picture, yes.
That's a very good way to superimpose your foot upon the game.

I do that myself. I call it the Thematic Game Goal for each run.
Other than a newbie phase where you must (laboriously) learn game mechanisms,
the full game offers you breathtaking freedom of choice, and not enough time.
So you must choose something.

You don't have to restrict to 1 activity only. It's not that focused.
You can smuggle, and hunt xenos, and run missions, and be a pirate, and ship-fight.
Being good at any 2 of those doesn't force you to be bad at the others.

You can be good at all of those tasks, and still choose to focus on 1-2 of them.
That's fine, as long as you're the one choosing it.

0. Big Ships have Big Crews, and can do everything well.
"Everything" means all 6 card games, 2 kinds of combat, and hauling cargo.
OTOH, big ships are S L O W

So already that's one Big Decision.
Shall we play 7/42 and do Big Ship Things?
Or shall we risk everything on a 5/30 3400 hull run, and see if it beats xeno?
The small ship has a dice problem (because *cough* crew), plus a cargo problem.
So maybe you go into a small ship run knowing that you won't seek big cargo.

1. Every Era has several scripted narratives.
Thus, another meta-goal is: Shall we chase every narrative? Or ignore them?
You can chase them all, as one yardstick to compare your runs.
Or you can ignore them all, and Do Your Own Thing Completely.

Narrative missions also tend to give the progress-based Steam badges.
That's 1 small reason to do them at least once each.

N.B. some narrative missions drop V11 vignette weapons, which helps anti-xeno runs.
Hence, many xeno runs "must" go for those vignettes, as part of the prep.

2. You freely choose which missions to accept.
This directly affects the set of activities they'll make you do. It's all up to you.

On a large scale, you choose which direction to go.
The galaxy will pull you in every possible direction (simultaneously).
You impose a tour over it, to go there and come back.

One valid way to play is to muse, I've never been to that corner of the map.
That's my Thematic Game Goal! I shall go there and Visit Every Zone!

Another bold way to play is to say, I hate mission type X because it has blind jumps.
That's my Thematic Game Goal!
I'll visit that guy with 0 missions in my future-cone, accept a 24-jump mission,
and do Whatever It Takes! Just to brag that I did that!

3. Some of your Thematic Game Goals you can stumble into, on-the-fly.
Other goals are Before Template Time (because they drive the template itself).

+ if you've never played as Bounty Hunter
+ if you've never started as Zenrin on v2 Default (ugh )
+ if you just unlocked Assassin, and you want to play an Assassin Captain run vs. xeno
+ if you're tired of fleeing from xenos, and you want to Finally Learn to Fight Them
(and die trying, whatever it takes)
+ etc.

Runs like these can be very satisfying, because you go in with a plan, and it drives you.

Thank you for the quite detailed reply.

Originally posted by Slice:

Thank you for the quite detailed reply.

@Gimloy is the best replier