OK so a few things.
1. ER beyond is the sort of game where enough time has passed and enough weird crap will have happened that the setting will be...you know how there's 40k and there's warhammer fantasy? And how they've got this similar concept war between factions and there are similar ideas like chaos gods and stuff, but a lot of the major pieces are different? Something like that. I mean, if a child of Xan, a Flesh Worshiping Homonculi with strange capacities to survive injury and graft body parts to himself, decides to partner with datascryer from the evergrowing metal womb of Heah and head into an expansive Black mist hive thats lost it's connection to the voices of the creators, Are we too derivative? Because thats what I'm thinking of going for. Humanity is gonna get weird.
2. The idea would be to focus on smaller missions, with 5-10 people, one mission at a time. And for those missions to be done quicker, so I can focus and give more time to those missions, and hopefully do a better job than right now.
3. In terms of what we do between missions, I was thinking of something that might work and might also elevate some strain. First, instead of tinker, something like a modified crafting system. What Do I mean by that? Well, basically, when the game starts and as it continues I could create a big ass list of parts. And like a normal crafting system, you'd have recipes that would call for certain things and once you got them all together you could roll and attempt to make it. The difference being that people could also do what amounts to inventing by suggesting new recipes. Ie, say we have a pipe, pipe ends, a bag of nails and a piece of plastic explosive, and a detonator circuit. And there's no recipe for making that into a bomb, but it makes sense that it should be able to be done. So you suggest it, with the list of parts. And then I look at it and say alright, I change it to two versions, manual and remote, change it to need an extra part or two and then throw it out into the world and anyone can make it. It's more limited than tinker, yes, but also a lot easier to manage and gets done faster.
Second, I read a lot of RPG systems, and I came across a rather interesting one lately, Called Strike!, and it's a lot like RTD. The major difference being that the players themselves have a lot more influence on the game. It's less about "oh, I'll do this action and the GM will roll and tell me how it goes" and more about "I'll roll and then me and other players decide what happens and the GM makes sure we're not gaming the system". It also handles opposed rolls rather interestingly in that depending on the number difference, things happen, but your opponent has a hand in deciding the outcome. For instance, if you roll and get a "Succeed with a cost" you would win, but your opponent would choose the cost at which you succeed (again, with the GM keeping an eye on it to make sure the opponent isn't being a dick). I think that would be an interesting way of handling the on ship aspect of the game, if we can give players a fair deal of autonomy within reason. It takes a lot of pressure off me but also makes it so people can still do things. Of course it's a very delicate balance and we'd need to have some method of verifying rolls and probably a strike system of preventing abuse or power gaming, but I think our community is such that we could pull of self rule. Within the confines of the secondary part of the game, at least. If that makes sense. Let the "on Ship" equivalent be a mostly player run hive of scum and villainy while the missions themselves become my focusing point.