One way that would make your game better is to have a character and starship creation part of the game much simular to that of Earth and Beyond's character and starship creation.
Go to this lnk and you will be able to download the character and starship program and actually toy around it.

This is a download so don't say that I did not warn ya ;)
ftp://ftp.westwood.com/pub/earthandbeyond/previews/demo/CharacterStarshipCreator.exe

I'm on a mac, I can't look at it. Besides, I like the current system. It's not too immersive, agreed, but it's also a no-nonsense approach, and I'm kind of a sucker for that.