Hotz Space Battle Map, Starship Design, and Exploring the Periphery

I hope to have a few ships designed for an upcoming week's Sunday game using minis and the Starship Combat rules on the beautiful 6' by 3' Hotz hex map.

The PCs had their Arkay ship completely retrofitted and now we need a space based enemy force to challenge them in their new assignment of stellar cartography.  This session had them meet another far flung survivor colony, escapees from the Starshock, who had lived in isolation for over 5k years.  This society had not collapsed as much, technologically, but their oppressive society was no model for emulation.  The majority of the survivors were Hierophantic Church folk, and the balance were Psionic College personnel.  The global society had been kept in line through subliminal propaganda and other psychotronic warfare, and this lasted nearly 3.5k years until the secret had been revealed, and the faction wars erupted.  Knowing the psychotronics are in use is not much defence against them in their most aggressive form, but the factions are able to operate in a sort of faltering fashion to cause enough grief to the governing body.  The PCs walked in on this situation and quickly found out they were siding with the oppressors (although the factions weren't much better), and left to continue their cartography mission.

Their destination is a cluster of supergiant and giant stars which ad existed deeper in the former galaxy, but had been displaced to the periphery by the Starshock.  Their planetary systems were of extreme interest to the Humanosphere, and the mission takes the PCs away from the Dark Core which had lured their former captain to the brink of Court Marshal.