There's a T5 concept MOARN - Map Only As Really Necessary - that needs to apply to worldbuilding. If the Travellers are just passing through, maybe UWP is all you'll ever need for a system. If you want to dive deep on a world for a particular aspect, I'm trying to make it so you don't have to dive deep for everything else, but just for the parts you need. A bit tricky and I've already tripped over a couple of examples where the DMs have made me go back and do more work. I'm trying to avoid that sort of thing, even at the cost of some 'realism'.
I dislike that concept, and when playing in a VTT setting, find it actually takes away from game play.
With today's home computers being able to generate everything from the various dwarf planets orbiting in the outer reaches of a systems oort cloud, to generating a full branch of the local stellar arm, players want to be able to look at it as a fast wiki entry.
Trying to generate that on the fly, slows down game play and if you are trying to wing it, it ends up having players asking all sorts of questions that they could have answered with a quick reference to a wiki or printed pdf. (most likely a pdf on a smart phone.)
If a procedural approach is designed, before the week is out, you will have developers building it for thier own use and to share with others.
IF this was not the case, noone would care about the Travellermap, nor would they have all sorts of planetary map software.
While most players will never roll a single die to create a world, all of them will read about the different stars, planets, nebula and dream dreams of galactic empires with wild frontiers. The original WBH was packed full of reference tables and formula's, while just being an extension of the system presented in the core MT rules, but, it is one of the most beloved books for those who have it.
Most players will use an auto-generating program - I wrote my own and use it for my stuff, along with a javascript version of explanator that generates full text library data entries for the systems, worlds and everything encountered within that is marked as "explored" (you want to have secrets the players need to find)
So, with orbits, you want to provide all six parametres, even though you ignore them for temperature generation so that the players imagination and suspension of disbelief is maintained. With Barycentres, you don't calculate it, you place it and then set a system around it (even if it happens to sit within the boundary of one of the stars) you don't care about the actual mechanics as you are not building a simulation, but a model that can pass the muster of an old grey beard who wants to look up a term in wikipedia.
Elite dangerous has all the appearance of space engine without any of the underlying physics - just enough to let players enjoy the game.
So, lots of small die rolls and die modifiers, who cares, that is what software is for.
Having enough detail so that it feels like an actual survey team has entered the system and that you have a computer giving the players the details - that is magic.
Don't like formulas, use lookup tables, don't like pages of lookup tables, provide them as downloadable csv files so the book is not all tables.
Or put them into a separate book that is all tables (better idea as then you can read what a table means in one book while having the other book open to the table in question)/
So, details and mechanics are key - I created a spreadsheet to test out stellar density formulas before writing them down, knowing full well that anyone reading the work would do little more than give it a cursory glance and a developer would make it irrelevant, but, the fact that the tables are there, give weight to the work if for little more than to feel like this is as close to real science as you can get in an rpg.
It is your book, your production. From my standpoint, I will buy it as I am a completionist at heart, but, you have the opportunity to make this even better than the original MT WBH. It's up to you.
