I'm on your side here, JP, though there is one thing that hasn't been mentioned re: hp disparity between Fighter and Rogue (and yeah, sorry DD, but your "+1 HP per level, or 40 HP at 20" isn't logical as written. But that's just a case of misused punctuation) - the fighter, 99.9% of the time will have a higher Con score. Even if using average HP per level (which is literally +1 HP per level) as a base, the Fighter will more often than not have at least +2 Con over the same level Rogue (especially if said Rogue is using an archetype that needs a 3rd stat to work - AT, SB, etc).

I'm curious, in general, if there was a feat, or feat chain that granted the base Ranger abilities: Favored Enemy, Natural Explorer, or even Tasha's substitutions, and you were allowed to play gestalt with classes, would you rather have the Ranger (whichever iteration), or play a Druid/Rogue//Fighter or Druid/Fighter//Rogue to recreate the feel of the Ranger? (Halving the Druid is a requirement to keep the spells from being far more powerful than the bog-standard Ranger)

The point being, it seems if it's only FE/NE and the variants for them that make the Ranger a Ranger, then making them a Feat (or two if they're too powerful to group up), seems the better route. Let anyone "be a Ranger" who wants to spend the feat resource, and they can then play a class that fills in the gaps that they personally feel represents the iconic tropes for the class.