You would think, but somehow I don't think we will be seeing a modding community anywhere near as robust as we've seen in TES and Fallout either way. What you can expect is the same kind of "mods" that Creation Workshop has: Short, tiny simple quests with loot. There is already Star Wars, Star Trek, Halo, Call of Duty, Battlestar Galactica and other space themed mods for armor, weapons and spaceships and I figure if you want to roleplay as such in a Bethesda setting you're going to be in luck. Unfortunately, the game is just far too broken for any major overhauls to take place even if there were people willing to fix this mess. Too many shaky or straight up rotten foundations, not enough good tools, and then we come across the compatibility issues. If a mod like this comes out, I figure it will be a "must have" that gets recommended to all the newcomers, so any big mods will create compatibility patches either way. I don't see the community being alive enough for sister projects or competition to crop up.
Bethesda fucked up big time with this: Their games since Morrowind have always been shit but modders always "saved them"...that is until Fallout 76 released and it couldn't be modded. Starfield could have had a redemption arc, even if it couldn't be saved from itself, but Bethesda knowingly sabotaged the game for some unknown reason and now there is no hope for it. The game was always going to have the disadvantage of not having an established userbase for a new IP and yet Bethesda instead of helping the new franchise out basically kicked it into the grave early for some extra shekels with their Content Creation Club, I assume.
I would say I'm surprised, but I also saw how Gamefreak took away National Dex, the one thing separating Pokemon from most other franchises, and now the games are still selling as slop even without hardcore fans supporting them. I guess Todd looked at that and other similar scenarios and thought that enough people would buy his game regardless, he was wrong. Starfield isn't Pokemon and Microsoft isn't Nintendo, Todd flew too close to the sun and realized that yes, he wasn't untouchable. His games weren't going to sell no matter what like with Nintendo and Pokemon, two established powerhouses with rabid fanbase, and now Bethesda is screwed since they don't have the talent to actually fix the game and make it palatable to the masses. Even if they did pull off a 2.0 reboot like No Man's Sky or Cyberpunk, there have been too many bridges burned and I doubt Microsoft cares to spend that much money to fix the game, better to sell it on Playstation and write it off as a loss.
Ironic, the whole setting of Starfield is about how the society has rotted away thanks to all the social poz and diversity, which is exactly what happened to Bethesda. New Atlantis is supposed to be the shining beacon of humanity, the largest remaining city and yet it is nothing more than a mystery meat filled corrupt Googleplex of a cardboard city filled with urbanites who smell their own farts all day long. This is Bethesda, people who lost their way and yet think they are the king of the mountain all the same. Starfield is just as hollow and full of holes as New Atlantis, poetic justice really considering even the planet the city is on is called "Jemison". It is a sterile, boardroom handpicked name that was based off the first black woman cosmonaut. Even the shining jewel of the Settled System is quite literally a diversity hire planet, that's how little creativity is left at the studio.
