I am not sure what they can do at this point.
I say:
Re-focus entire game. They have a chance to turn everything around using space as a means to move into a open world sandbox. so what if the planets are theme park. so what if the story is shoehorned 1-50. let that be the nice introduction. from here on out, open space with randomly generated armies, cruisers, pvp space stations that can be boarded, destroyer world bosses and so on, can all be a combination of randomly generated and changing content.
advantages:
1) you can have exciting real time combat in space easily, because your not even rendering the "ground". your just having players floating in a skybox.
2) space can introduce guild capital ships.
3) we can destroy the boring fleets, and have community scatter other places.
4) space is the thing that gw2/tera/secret world/others does not have.
Making the space game an expansion like jump to lightspeed will not be enough. Even if they went fully free 2 play I am not even sure it would be enough. despite good reviews and good initial sales, it was just not enough. Despite being Star Wars it was not enough. So going Free 2 play won't be enough. The only way out of this is a complete restructure of the game.
the story failed. My Guardian is a carbon copy of every other guardian. It's beyond insulting that it is this similar. It's annoying. Offensive even.
The game is not bad, but someone prioritized wrongly.
And while controversial, I really think they should make heroric combat like they said they would. Wielding a lightsaber is incredible unsatisfying. Goddamit... Jedi Knight 3 were are you???