More generally, I want the Yor to not feel shoehorned into the game. For instance, don't lock them at 100% approval and make us go to the trouble of manually raising the tax rate to max. Just get rid of those mechanics for any race that's a singular consciousness (biological, mechanical, or otherwise). The way the Yor have been integrated into GC up to this point make them feel like fan additions limited by proper development tools. They're cool as hell and one of my favorite races, but they never feel like they've had the treatment they deserve.

Do all robots/synthetic beings have to be evil? Could we potentially get a quest (unless scope would allow an entirely new robot race) where the Yor re-evaluate life and instead decide to try and protect all conscious life in the galaxy?

I liked Twin Ping’s idea for a Galactoc Synthetic Games. To me it sounds like a clear cultural path for them. Getting other friendly races to compete in a robotics games of sorts. 

like the real Olympics it could be a large financial burden to the host (planet) for the benefit of cultural boost.  I think there is a good non-‘evil’ quest idea there. 

Having more robot and technology themed events exclusive to the YOR would be a really solid way to give them their own identity. Perhaps utilizing technology to cause debuffs to enemy vessels in combat, slowing them down and or reducing their vision radius on the campaign map and instigating rebellions or at least causing an approval/manufacturing debuff in a select opposing colony.

Expanding on this, perhaps entire separate banks of colonization events that can only happen to carbon, silicon, aquatic, and synthetic lifeforms? A lot of colonization events simply don't make sense for certain races.

The number of unique colonization events wouldn't need to change, per se. Rather, let's say you design 1,000 mechanically unique colonization events, so that all races do have the exact same event table. Many of them could be generic and work for all races (There's a rare resource on this planet! What should we do with it!). However, some of the events could have a decision tree that displays different text based on the player's civilization. Further, you may even make the different versions recognizable across playthroughs. For instance, a 'what to do with these natives' event might offer 'enslave them, learn from them, or leave them alone,' as options to one category of races. But the Yor might instead receive options to 'exterminate them, experiment on them, or leave them alone.'

That kinda reminds me of the events in FTL, where sometimes certain choices would only be available if you meet a certain condition - have a particular race of crew on board with some particular skill, or have a powerful enough engine, or whatever.

(Again, not necroing for reason it still aplllies imo as a question)

I'm thinking of this seriously:

How about an "exceed their programming in succesfully re-integrating themselves into galactic society by actually befriending, trading and peacefully co-existing with non Yor?" It all starts with a glitch event that miraculously hacks into their mainframe units and makes a lot them behave like in the aforomentioned scenario which was an existing scenario they had stored and re-run from time to time but always declined to apply in the past. At first they try to destroy the faulty units, then wipe their drives and re-install their initial objectives and finally gradually recognizing there are actual merits in that behavioral pattern after all.