I'm with you on everything but Kamen, the douche.
He intentionally took a risk that he didn't need to and endangered everyone on board to save his job. After being told explicitly not to.
I can't stand him, but that just means he's a good character, because you're not supposed to.
I was going to try to make a game like this. Shortly after I started I found that ThinMatrix was working on a game called Home Grown that does most of what I wanted. It's not as in-depth as you're saying, but it might be something you enjoy.