Bear in mind that Federation and Empire has its ins and outs in terms of what kind of economic and military details it presents.
Yes, there are plenty of on (and off-)map planets in the various provinces, but only the major and minor industrial worlds that have a notable impact on the strategic level (such as Earth, Mars and Vulcan) are specifically designated as locations in their own right. (And even in the case of most multi-planet capital hexes, no more than a fraction of minor/majors would be in the same star system.)
Plus from a military perspective, F&E treats each naval warship as a single unit (especially now in the 2010 edition, where the old carrier group counters have been divided up) but ground-combat regiments are more heavily abstracted, as are fighters and PFs.
Of course, that still makes larger operations (like the General War grand campaign, or the recently-published ISC Pacification) a lot of effort to set up and play; but depending on the scaling used, it could still be manageable for those willing to give it a proper go.
That said, you needn't have to dive into larger campaigns right off the bat. Presumably, the kind of smaller-scale operations that will be in F&E Civil Wars would be echoed here by, say, offering an introductory scenario looking at one of the conflicts mentioned in Historical: Brush Wars; or perhaps something more along the lines of Operation KLONDIKE for would-be Clan strategists (and maybe even SABLE SUN, to let them practice their WarShip deployments before making planetfall in the Pentagon worlds).
I'm not saying it isn't possible, just that TPTB don't tend to go all out with detail and I"m pretty darned sure wouldn't want that, and I don't know sales figures of BT compared to counter games to see if there is a whole other audience out there (I suspect there is based on prices and #s of new counter type products, but may not be enough to justify to TPTB).
The issue is though, if they make a system that is only for smaller regions of space, it will most likely break down if you want to do the entire inner sphere. If they do something grand enough for the inner sphere, the detail will be so lacking that your merc company will be a meaningless number (if it even qualifies as a number).
Initially, I was thinking:
1 counter per Warship
1 counter per 3-6 jumpships (12 dropship capacity, can have a "pony express" counter with a # to signify the # of jumps the counter can handle)
1 counter per dozen dropships (various types, troop/assault or carrier/mech/cargo)
1 counter per mech battalion, with some mech companies represented
Maybe 100 counters per faction for leaders and special characters
1 counter per armor regiment, infantry brigade, attillery battalion, BA battalion, etc, again with some smaller units represented
Then you have some counters for factories... that is a couple thousand right there, and though the JS/DS factored GREAT (c100 JS and c100 DS counters per house in 3025, though I assumed 50% were merchants and not represented by counters) until SO multiplied those numbers by 10 or more, completely breaking down the fact that jumpships are rare and hard to find when you need them, and destroying dozens of pages of text on the 4th SW/privateering/etc/etc.
Now the big issue ended up how to track those units. If you want pure counters, you need a counters for fatigue and supplies at least, if not other ones for morale and experience. You'd need counters for damage, maybe counters for leaders. If you say put a mech RCT or so on a business card sized piece of paper, you can have circles to represent all that, saving a LOT of counters needed and making units VERY easy to have 1 "card" per era, per unit, easy to swap between players for mercs, etc, etc. If you want pure counters your talking thousands right there.
And finally you have intelligence type stuff. If its tracked via paper great, no counters, but it also destroys any chance of psyching out the enemy. I thought of having a set # of counters you can get each turn (maybe 100 per house at most) that could be used, plus lots of decoy counters to throw off the trail. The counters would be generated at intelligence facilities, and could be placed on worlds to gain intelligence, create uprisings, assassinate leaders, all that stuff in ISIF and some more. The decoys could let you play mind games with your opponent.
And then there are systems. You pretty much have to be able to track ownership by counters, unless you sell everybody a blank IS map on laminate, and then provide a list of hexes where borders are for each era (not horrible, but not a pretty map either, though since many systems didn't chance hands it could be mostly colored), you would have to have hundreds of counters per faction to show who owns what systems. AND, if you actually detail out systems at all (VERY unlikely), you'd also have to have counters saying things like "HPG destroyed", "Recharge Station Built @ Nadir Point", or whatever.
Now, if *I* had the money, and *I* was in charge of this, I would do a 100% counter game, but release it as modules. The base module is say 3025, with military units only. Then you'd add an intelligence module, with all those counters/rules. Then add a supply/logistics module, then factory/production module, and so on. Probably be 5-10 modules, each with a few hundred to a few thousand counters, each with a different map, each costing $60 or so. Mirror F&E in that respect. If you want to play it ALL sure, knock yourself out! If you don't care about logistics completely leave that module out. Combat could even be easy/detailed, allowing people to play out a campaign focusing on intelligence, that could tie into ATOW. A political module, a "what if" module (or more), some special unit modules, the clan module, etc, etc. Plus, you'd have a module for each war (or even each border). Build it right and you can fight from 2596 through 3120 with the same system, and have similar results.
Regardless of what TPTB do, I am going to attempt to convert it into a computer game. While I want to see IO out, well, a before Total Warfare, I kinda hope it doesn't come out till December as I am running for congress, expect (and hope) to loose in November, and really don't need that distracting me :)
If anybody is interested, I actually have tons of excel spreadsheets with thoughts and dynamics on how I've thought this would work. Its been a side project of mine for like 10 years now, and I've worked through a LOT of issues. The only thing preventing me from finishing it was a lack of 100% data for any particular year (we have that now for 3085, woohoo!), and I just haven't been sure to make it hex/counter or computer, and have a hard time sticking with it long enough to just do one or the other. I've even done up those business card like things I mentioned. Anyway, if anybody wants to see some of that and discuss it I'd be more than happy to, though not so much within the forums as PM's and regular old email.