"What do you look for in a Sci-Fi Crawl?" Topic

So I am resurrecting an old project which was a sci-fi dungeon crawl. The core mechanics were already finished, so now I am flushing it out with proper detail. It currently supports up to about 5 players, and can be solo or game mastered (though GM'd is far superior) The game is packaged more as a toolkit to customize rather than being a full game, it will be playable, but you'll need at least a little creativity depending on the figures and terrain you have you'll need to tweak things. So what would you look for in a game that may be overlooked?

Things I am looking to add are a room deck (or chart) with the actual purpose of the room. So one of the options could be Cryo Chamber – You find a lone survivor in a slightly damaged cryo tube, make a skill roll to see if you can open the chamber, you require one success. If you succeed, gain a victory point. If you fail, the survivor dies.
Multiple Scenario objectives. You'll have to gain 3 victory points to complete each scenario, primary objectives are worth 2, the secondary is worth 1. Boss kills are always worth 1 VP, so you can occasionally skip certain victory conditions and still win. I may only require 2 VP to win, so that you can skip the primary more often.
Themed Parties. You can select a theme for your adventure Party, like Soldiers, Pirates, Explorers, etc. This will grant your whole party a specific special ability as well as help theme your objectives.

Any other thoughts?

Fallout and Skyrim have hitech ruins, great for visuals-check youtube for some examples.

The 'dungeon' could be a powered asteroid base-ship.

Metamorphosis Alpha-a generation ship to explore.

I was toying with a Battletech 'Brian' Fortress crawl-huge underground installations scaled for 40' battlemechs to walk around in.

Or a Underground canyon/cavern system for Crimson Skies. Or for submarines, a water-based one.

Well the theme of the dungeon will technically be up to the player. I generally assume the installation is either overrun with alien critters or was taken over by an enemy faction.
By default the theme is a Derelict space craft, hence the name of the game. Derelict.

anyone remember the old 'Kung Fu 2100', pocket Board game.
Post-apoc future where super trained KF dudes attack the evil 'Clone Master'. The combat was based on what style of 'fu the player used to attack and defend. The Clone Master had Cops, bad kung fu guys, and we made up rules for robots.

We have played a few sci-fi guncrawls over the years, and I always appreciated rules concerning electricity, rerouting power to open doors, etc. Like the ship is dark but the reactor is still functioning, so players have the option of powering up certain sections of the ship using either the reactor power or portable batteries. Then they can access the ship's computer, laser defense grid, unlock hidden rooms, recharge weapons, etc.

I haven't played it yet, but "Five Parsecs from Home" apparently has some very good ideas you might want to look to for inspiration. The "how the party got together" table for example would add color to any game or campaign. I like the idea of varying the party's type and you could do separate tables for different party types.

Also I'd like to add a suggestion for a scenario type: Get item X from an area being contested by two rival armies (or vary it to gangs/etc.). Just make sure to cite your source if you use that one… :-p

Patrick, the power idea is pretty cool! I'll see what I can do to streamline that into the rules as well. While a lot of that seems very scenario driven, I can still get the core stuff in there for players to tinker with.

I hadn't even heard of the latter game, I'll see what I can dig up.

The game "Guncrawl" had a random table to roll on when survivors are discovered. They can be injured and neeed treatment, catatonic, ex-military, infested/infected/assimilated, etc.

Star Fleet Battles had tables for "defeating the giant space monster" scenarios, where you first had to accrue "science points" or something like that before you could roll on the table to see what defeats the creature.

I'd want to see some hacking/engineering stuff in the game, some of which may be critically important to the mission (eg, stop the reactor/engines, restore life support, etc)

I think adding an element of mystery is what really enhances "derelict" games.

Maybe, instead of treasure, sometimes you get clues to "what happened here."

This is hard to do without limiting the players'a scenario options, though.

If he rules set supports different skills these clues can be tied directly to different skills, too…

Thieving space monkeys.