You should have a good balance of mission distributed at appropriate part along the path of the player. For example, don't have any 'Fight of Pirate Fleet' when the player is still in a scoutship, the mission will be almost impossible to do and the player will just get annoyed and end up changing the mission in ResEdit. Start out with courier and delivery missions, giving an average ammount of money, so the player can afford a decent ship fairly early on. Don't have a ton of 5,000 credit missions that are all exactly the same. Have a few rush deliveries and about three urgent deliveries plus around ten cargo missions. Have these missions repear all throughout the game (with different destinations of course).
I would also have about three missions strings similar to Frontier Express strings and the starbound shipping ones, so the player feels as though he's actually developing his character with the surrounding galaxy, instead of just character-less cargo missions. Once the player would presumably have enough for a decent ship, inject some Escort Missions, so the player can get a taste of combat. Then it's up to your plot really. Don't forget to have more cargo missions appear though, so the trader-players don't get board.
As for 'Reign of UE', sounds like a good idea. my advice is to create this plug first, before going on to make a TC. A total conversion requires at least three people as wellof months of hard work, a person new to plug develping can get disheartened.
Just my opinion though.
------------------
(url="http://"http://pages.hotbot.com/games/ambjorn/index.html")1000 Worlds(/url)
(url="http://"http://www.AmbrosiaSW.com/webboard/Forum10/HTML/001524.html")The Tides of War(/url)
(url="http://"http://www.ohhla.com")The Original Hip-Hop Lyrics Archive(/url)
Hip Hop Recomendation of the week: Cypress Hill - Skull and Bones
------------------