Oh god, the green, it burns my eyes.
Although the game would be great as a standalone sandbox strategy space shooter: Are there any plans to branch out into character personalities and drama?
I'll say maybe
Personalities are a gray area for now, though we're thinking about it. As far as drama, I very much want to have the game create emotionally-charged situations, without being explicit about it. An example I like to go back to is MoO2, where you could exterminate the populations of captured planets. There was no judgment about the decision either way built into the game, it was just a mechanic with some advantages and disadvantages - but it managed to elicit an emotional response, nonetheless. Part of it was how understated and matter-of-fact the whole thing was.
How do you feel being able to disable ship systems could be balanced to avoid a tipping scale style of gameplay?
That's a great question. Clearly, disabling systems disadvantages a ship (unless we do something silly like giving such a ship a bonus). To avoid slippery slope, the disadvantage has to be temporary and non-cumulative.
So, if damaged systems were automatically repaired by the crew, and
could not be damaged while they were being repaired, a lot of the slippery slope could be avoided - you'd gain a temporary advantage by disabling some enemy guns and could do some damage in safety, but unless you disabled the ship, the guns would be back within some fixed period of time.