War In The Heavens pt. 6: lack of focus-hey a shiny thing!

So I have come to an issue I did not anticipate when I first started this project. I got really excited about the setting and mechanics that I lost sight of the most critical aspect of the game. What do the player characters do?

I could go with, they do whatever they want, but honestly that is a cop out. I could design the game and see if there is a goal that emerges as I go along, but again I think that is not going to cut it. So I have now set myself to defining what this game is about. I guess I will dissect what I have so far and see what I can pull from that.

The title I have is The War In The Heavens so lets start with that. War, that works for me. Games thrive on conflict and war is nothing but conflict. Also a lot of my source material is about war, or at least has a military bent to it. Also there is the Heavens aspect of it. We could could view that as a reference to space, but it also could refer to literal heavens. This leads to a religious angle that I really like. Again a lot of my source material is religious in nature so we can definitely use that. Holy war(or wars) in space work for me. It even goes back to some ideas I had about Star Gate and Star Wars, both of which are really just holy crusades against certain forms of religion, but more on that later(maybe).

Also we have massive ships that carry fighter-craft, and massive alien star gates that are the only way to travel faster than light. So this leads to choke points in space, as well as communication being slow. Maybe that is what the player characters are? Members of a courier ship. They could either be the skeleton crew of a cheep courier service or defenders of the imperial post or something.

So far there are no aliens, but I could add a potential alien menace from beyond the stars. And there is what happens to pilots when they travel through the star gate. This implies an alien agenda, or the remnants of one, so I could have a Chthonian alien exploration kind of plot. Where the characters seek out the godlike creators of the gates.

See here is my problem I have. There are so many options available that I don't really know what the standard role for the player characters will be. While I can have many different options, there needs to be an initial assumption of place in the universe. I need to narrow my focus. I am leaning more and more toward Holy War. I have to think on this some more. Maybe I can work this out on my own, but if anyone is reading this and has a really great idea, let me know. I will take any help I can get at this point.