I'm pretty confident that the more complex you make your construction rules, the fewer people will use them. As the system becomes more complex, the ratio of real play to page count gets worse and worse. I think the same is largely true of vehicular combat. Accordingly, my preference would be for a bare-bones, very low barrier of entry system. Not because I don't want to build starships or have space fights, but precisely because I do want those things, but my stores of time and effort are finite. So, if your ship construction rules or your space combat rules fit on one two-page spread and take 10 minutes to resolve, I'll actually get a chance to use them. If it takes 2 hours to design a ship or to run a battle, probably not.
I think people when reviewing or skimming are looking for amount of content on a topic. If you gloss over ships, yes, they'll notice. But if you do the basics but then provide those things you mentioned about making journeys interesting in ways that don't automatically involve dog fights then they'll be less prone to argue even if they'd prefer to use a spreadsheet to tweak their customisation.
Maybe I'm projecting, but I think most people want a range of ships to pick off the rack that they can occasionally upgrade in simple ways, not having to make complicated tonnage calculations. Added bonus for the systems for making non-combat interesting journeys
Having played in or run both styles since the late 70s depending on the inclination of the players at the table I’d say an Appendix of the more detailed rules would be a useful adjunct in case play went there - or even to function as a ward against that direction - but I’d likely get into Thousand Suns if we wanted to play the more narrative, lit focused campaign you envision. There’s lots of tactical ship fighting variants to scratch our itch with. Your system promises to enable other styles of campaign and play. I think it would pay to make that your North Star and remain true to it. At least that way purchasers wanting the other won’t be disappointed and bash you for not doing it, they’ll know going in where the thrust of the mechanics are aimed. We can all love to have many design problems to solve but I suspect Thousand Suns will benefit from your focus on the core direction, not ticking all possible marketing targets. I’ll sub to your feed just to learn more of this I think.
The design-lite option worked well for my FFG Star Wars games and my "Lady Blackbird" games. No one in the group wanted to design and then fund (!) and then wait for the construction (!!) of the building of a new fast light freighter, but adding quad laser cannons, an ECM package and faster hyperdrive made them very happy. Eventually they "acquired" another ancient freighter and started customizing it also.
If each stock starship available in the rules has some fluff history about it's designed role, the race/house/company who initially built it, etc. and how it's used now, how common it is, that lends some backbone to this approach. IMO at least.
Maybe the full starship design and build rules could be a supplement?
The toolbox approach, with lean systems in the main rules and the crunchy stuff as an optional appendix sounds right to me. Someone is always going to want to modify something, and if the mechanics aren't there, then they are having to figure it out/make it up. But I think most folks want the playability, which means low time/brain power investment to get the mods and then have the starship encounter/fight. If they want uber crunchy they can go to Star Fleet Battles or something like that.
I'm pretty confident that the more complex you make your construction rules, the fewer people will use them. As the system becomes more complex, the ratio of real play to page count gets worse and worse. I think the same is largely true of vehicular combat. Accordingly, my preference would be for a bare-bones, very low barrier of entry system. Not because I don't want to build starships or have space fights, but precisely because I do want those things, but my stores of time and effort are finite. So, if your ship construction rules or your space combat rules fit on one two-page spread and take 10 minutes to resolve, I'll actually get a chance to use them. If it takes 2 hours to design a ship or to run a battle, probably not.
Having the option between an intense hyper-crunchy ship system and (for me this sounds awesome) a "backdrop" system for Long Hauls sounds great.
I think people when reviewing or skimming are looking for amount of content on a topic. If you gloss over ships, yes, they'll notice. But if you do the basics but then provide those things you mentioned about making journeys interesting in ways that don't automatically involve dog fights then they'll be less prone to argue even if they'd prefer to use a spreadsheet to tweak their customisation.
Maybe I'm projecting, but I think most people want a range of ships to pick off the rack that they can occasionally upgrade in simple ways, not having to make complicated tonnage calculations. Added bonus for the systems for making non-combat interesting journeys
Having played in or run both styles since the late 70s depending on the inclination of the players at the table I’d say an Appendix of the more detailed rules would be a useful adjunct in case play went there - or even to function as a ward against that direction - but I’d likely get into Thousand Suns if we wanted to play the more narrative, lit focused campaign you envision. There’s lots of tactical ship fighting variants to scratch our itch with. Your system promises to enable other styles of campaign and play. I think it would pay to make that your North Star and remain true to it. At least that way purchasers wanting the other won’t be disappointed and bash you for not doing it, they’ll know going in where the thrust of the mechanics are aimed. We can all love to have many design problems to solve but I suspect Thousand Suns will benefit from your focus on the core direction, not ticking all possible marketing targets. I’ll sub to your feed just to learn more of this I think.
The design-lite option worked well for my FFG Star Wars games and my "Lady Blackbird" games. No one in the group wanted to design and then fund (!) and then wait for the construction (!!) of the building of a new fast light freighter, but adding quad laser cannons, an ECM package and faster hyperdrive made them very happy. Eventually they "acquired" another ancient freighter and started customizing it also.
If each stock starship available in the rules has some fluff history about it's designed role, the race/house/company who initially built it, etc. and how it's used now, how common it is, that lends some backbone to this approach. IMO at least.
Maybe the full starship design and build rules could be a supplement?
The toolbox approach, with lean systems in the main rules and the crunchy stuff as an optional appendix sounds right to me. Someone is always going to want to modify something, and if the mechanics aren't there, then they are having to figure it out/make it up. But I think most folks want the playability, which means low time/brain power investment to get the mods and then have the starship encounter/fight. If they want uber crunchy they can go to Star Fleet Battles or something like that.