I'm no expert by a long-shot, but I've been playing XCOM & TFTD style games since the original Laser Squad back in the late 1980's, on an Amstrad 464 with a 4-track cassette drive that took ages to load a level!
To me Piratez, and Solarius's Xcom-files, are worthy additions to the original game, unlike the modern XCOM with is just another run & shoot game without a lot of the strategic Geosphere elements that make the game worth playing. Admittedly I like the house-keeping aspects of making ammo, building ships etc. so I might in a minority!
Modern games are made for the attention-deficit kids of today who don't want to spend the time to build-up their character's stats by slogging through 'bug-hunt' (or Humanist safe-house type) missions or interrogating prisoners to find the clues to move the game on to the next level. Even then a lot of games nowadays are 'released' in a barely beta state just to make money. Then there's the 'loot-boxes' that can only be obtained by paying cash.
It would be a shame if Piratez was 'toned-down' to please the modern game-players as it would lose a lot of the core players, and I'm sure Dioxine isn't that kind of developer anyway judging by the way the game has become more involved and complex as it's evolved over the years.
So, yes, it could get 1000s of players by toning down the strategic elements and making it more action-orientated, but it would lose what makes the game worth playing in the first place.