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Tech Eras works for me. I always liked the Empire tech ages from the 1E Companion.
It also works well if you wish to tie certain Special units or abilities to technical advancement.

I like the supply rules you outlined. It would be nice to have a better role for blockade runners.
As for the consequences of a blockade I would recommend that the system produce one half EP and may only spend them in system.

I like this, especially the sending in spies with your trade fleets. Trade is a great way to boost your economy, but it opens you up to espionage. And whats funny is it doesn't even have to be against the owner of the system. I might set up shop in a trade partners system just to get closer to an e...

Building on all of this, if we wanted players to still be able to have Intel in foreign systems (I didn't like that addition to the rules!), I think we have a few options for getting there. The first is to use a similar system to how 2E does it, where you pay a range penalty for purchasing Intel, s...

I like this system. I never really like the MFP system, it always seemed overly complex.
However I do like being able to purchase intel in foreign systems, this allows for strategic placement of spy networks. Making it more expensive the further from your empire seems a good balancing method.

I like the "system as a sector" because I used to play Federation and Empire way back when. The idea of a hex 600 parsecs across and a turn of months helps make everything seem epic. The rules remain virtually identical, its mostly just some definitions that change. And I agree, single squ...

I have to say I like the single squadron concepts being discussed here. It simplifies things greatly which helps with the immersion. Tactics become clearer, and the effects of actions seem more meaningful. Since I typically consider each system to be a sector and scale up the turns to 3 months each ...

I have been working on a fleet built around the idea that cruisers and up would carry mines. These would actually be Autonomous Kill Vehicles (AKV). This would represent expendable drones to augment the combat power of a ship or squadron. 2 spaces of minelayer gives four minefields. That is a quite ...

Stellaris is fun. And the makers are a company that believes in supporting its games so it should only get better as it goes.

Just treat the flights as if they were independent instead of ship based for the calculation. That lets them count against the raiding chance pretty well, and fighters would be good against raiders so that fits. It would make carrier groups good patrol units. You get the bonus for the ships and the ...

I like Poor Nav, and Capacitors would be good for something like the SFB Andromedans. The Ram could also be a force field extension to protect the ship. Weber and White used something like that for the Theban ramming fleet in Crusade.
Of course, that's just color.

Count me on the all together side.
Its easier to just not use some of the rules than it is to find the advanced rules and add them in on the fly.

I like these rules.
They give you decisions that actually mean something to make during construction and and also assembling forces for an operation. But its only enough to to make things interesting, not enough to seem like a while new level of game tacked on.

You might want to check out the Star Carrier series by Ian Douglas. Its a sort of hard sf series with rampant nanotech and man machine interface and at least a couple of big battles per book. But it is full of big ideas and has a high wow factor. I especially like his take that aliens are, well alie...

Glad to hear things are coming together. Can't wait to see the new rules.