[interest check and advice] Space western!
Faster than light travel + cowboys = ?
I'm going for a Wild West vibe, but avoiding Firefly's chinglish. Also, I like the "railroads" analogy. Then travel by the "railroad" could be much faster than going "by horse" from town to town. However, the railroad needs extensive infrastructure (loads of Chinese guys to build the railroad, then there are watering stations and fuel depots and so on...) while your trusty horse needs only some grass and water. Going by horse gets even slower if you're not familiar with the terrain, watering holes and the like.
Now make railroads something like fast FTL (faster-than-light, like wormholes), horses into personal atmo/spaceships with limited FTL, carriages something that horses latch onto and give loads of cargo space at the cost of reduced speed, telegraphs into ansimbles...
cyborg steeds, yes, that's what I'm after. They actually drink water for reaction mass, and have nuclear reactors to make it into superheated steam that propels them along. Flying cyborg horses! :D And now I have a reason why they seek out water, and graze on uranium rich grass.
This also sets the scene for natives (the few colony slowship/seedship/sleepship descendants) vs. pioneer colonists (scouts at first, then untold masses coming in from the overpopulated East Coast vis the "railroads"). The hopelessly backward natives will have no resistance to the sicknesses the colonists bring (addictive videogames? nanotech gizmos? hyper-alcohol? memetic infection?) Indian wars, anyone?
Some places (where the "terrain" is not suitable for railroad building - perhaps the space between spiral arms in the galaxy?) might use the "ocean liner" paradigm - deep space = deep ocean.
Making timeframes playable. A sensible time for planetside travel would be hours to days; for planets, days to weeks; between stars, weeks to months (and the "railroad" might shorten it to weeks or days).
I'll confess I loved Saber Rider and the Star Sheriffs :) the world is reasonably realistic and gritty, yet style takes precedence over common sense. I want shootouts on airless asteroids and enormous red supergiant stars in the skies of endless deserts dotted with bleached cyber-cow skulls.
What does the esteemed readership think of the idea? Is this something you would play?
The second question is, what game system would you suggest for such a setting? I was gravitating towards something lightweight and quick-rolling, like Lasers and feelings.