let me break this down for you:
1 staff size ED is bigger than hello games 20x times over.
5 you say that you don't grind; correct ?
so you dont do combat, trading,mining, passengers missions, gold rushes, exploration, engineering? im very curious to know how do you play maybe i can get some pointers from you. please share your play-style i am very curious.
1) Doesn't matter, NMS has 5 types of planets, small planets, 1 environment per planet, ie: tropical, the entire planet, they don't orbit, they don't have gravity or even attempt to simulate gravity. ED's planets are affected by all the things that normal planets are affected by, heat from the sun, different distances from the sun during orbit, eclipses, axial tilt, there will be different season, tropical regions and icy areas near the pole, different environments in different areas of the planet, deserts, tundra, jungles, cyclones and weather affects that depend on all these factors, and this will all need to be the same for all players who visit. NMS has only just introduced multiplayer for up to "four" people, wow! Introducing atmospheric planets in the same standard as NMS would be a massive failure simply because people expect so much more from a game that claims to be some way towards a sim rather than a cartoony game.
5) No I don't grind, and you don't need to grind for any of those things you mentioned, except of course for PvP combat, which I don't do at all. Engineers is pretty much grindless if you do it right, but if you spend endless hours max engineering every single thing on every ship you own I imagine it can get pretty wearing, but then that's down to you, if you find it grinding then you are obviously doing it in a way that creates grind, you can do that in every game I have ever played, and I have played games which place far more emphasis on grind mechanics than ED.
You can see my play style if you look around the forums, I don't feel it necessary to tell you about myself, why you should think I am obligated to do that I don't know, from the way it's worded this seems to be some sort of snarky attack? If it is please refrain in the future.
Oh yes sizes. I have just spent 15 minutes looking for updated details on body sizes in the new NMS release, it's surprising how difficult it is just finding basic information like that, of course this is readily available information in ED, all they seem to have in NMS is "small", "Medium" and "large." In ED I have landed on planets from as small as 138km radius up to 25,000kms in radius and everything in between, I can post you the details of every one of them within minutes if I wanted to. The main problem with NMS for me is simply this sort of engagement, it is ultimately shallow in a way that ED isn't. Of course both game have their faults, which games don't, but lets not try and turn ED into a copy of NMS, that would be a disaster from many players perspectives.