As a question, will the expansion be available for preorder on Steam?
It's possible, but unlikely as they don't generally carry beta stuff. They should also recognize keys bought from us but we can't guarantee it: if registers-on-steam is a 100% requirement for you then don't buy it until you can buy it direct from steam 
Ah, okay - I thought they were more open to early-access betas, as I keep seeing ads for them frequently (e.g., the new CounterStrike game being promoted now).
However, I'm curious as to the reasoning behind making champions take a separate player spot - was it the separate UI requirements, or balance, or limiting total stations and champions, or ...?
Mainly it's what was possible with the underlying code architecture (tracking a bunch of extra data about a player is a lot easier than doing it about a ship, particularly when it comes to the tech unlocks, and various other issues) and what the UI supports.
Gotcha. I figured it was something along those lines. One of these days I'd be curious to know about y'all's experience with Unity - one of the many, many things I've been curious about but lacked the time to delve into.
handling the champion is obviously intended to be a "full-time job,"
Not really, you can just use it like a super-starship while you're in normal fleet-operations mode and go off on solo jaunts while you're waiting on refleets (that's actually one of the things I'm hoping to address with this: when you're refleeting you now have an alternative to Netflix! 
)
That will be most welcome. I tend to have enough fabs that I don't have to wait too long, but I remember during the tutorial refleeting for my second (and third, if memory serves) homeworld strike took FOORRREEEEVVVEEERRR (like almost an hour apiece on +10 speed, IIRC).
