Sorry to leave you all hanging for so long, but I haven't been certain about what to do with this, myself. Pre-ChaNES has been an interesting game in its own right so far, but I don't think that can continue. Some interesting stuff was set to happen during the coming update, but after that, everything looks to be heading inevitably for stagnation. I expected that the colonization front and the situation on Earth would settle down after awhile, and that's why I had the BT turns set up, but I don't think that can solve it.
On Earth, the Solar Federation was going to absorb the PRC. There were some plans in the works that would've made that go less than smoothly, but it was still going to happen. The Interstellar Commonwealth didn't look to be assimilated anytime soon, but its military and political strength in Sol were weak and getting weaker by the year. The Solar Federation had consolidated itself to the point where it could get away with pretty much anything. A sudden collapse was out of the question.
Meanwhile, each colony was developing along its own path. Just about every player-controlled colony was doing something interesting on one level or another, but interaction between the colonies was pretty limited, and the developments weren't really notable on a five to ten year scale, let alone the yearly scale I was intending for the main NES. A NES can only go so far on internal affairs alone. The ASTRIS, Commonwealth, and PRC colonies provided an interesting contrast, but they didn't really have the power to do anything to each other aside from boring trade agreement stuff.
Even if we went through hundreds of years of BTs to make each colony's population and industry comparable to Earth's, I don't think that much would change. There's no real incentive for the planets to war with each other, and without that threat, most of the game's diplomacy would be pretty boring.
So, I believe that ChaNES has an interesting setting, but not much potential for a NES. I want to use what we've created here somehow, but I don't think it will be in a NES. The premise wasn't feasible in the first place. A "realistic" interstellar setting, even if faster than light travel is somehow possible, just doesn't lend itself to the NESing experience.