I needed a break for a day or two after calculating most of Rebel start up stuff, but it turned in to a week after I booted up a Persia campaign in Empire Total War. ;p I will still try it out as the rules set is interesting even at least to see what we can learn from it to apply further.
Admittedly it's a huge chunk of math to bite off. Somewhat unwieldy. A more traditional venture may be more digestible to all and take off on it's own wo requiring any self or external motivation..
Something more open ended, wide open galaxy, traditional grid/arcs. Take some small nuanced differences to plant in there to slightly tweak the game perhaps. One concept that really changes the strategy of moving/positioning a ship is to borrow from Armada, and say a cap ship can never occupy same space as another cap ship or they ram, and that a capship may attack from 2 arcs in 1 turn. Not whole fleets, but if players were allowed to control something like 2-3 capships, now 1 player vs 1 player is much different. You wouldn't necessarily just keep your ships close to ea other because then its easy pickings to allow opponent to attack both at once, so you're more cognizant of where you're putting your ships rather than just moving them close enough to hit one another. *shrug*
With movement/headings on a traditional grid, this really changes the dynamic. No more mobbing up in 1 space and position/facing/how you'd use your maneuver/turn/speed points matters a lot more. At least in theory. Just a simple thought to take traditional system and make it less predictable/repeated. More range/damage variation, maybe instead of generic dmg for a TL/Laser/Ion/HTL/QTL etc, it's per ship/spec.
Anyway, Im still eager to get some simming going of some form.