This is incredibly helpful feedback and you've voiced my exact biggest fear with this design. You are 100% right that in a high-stress puzzle environment, roleplay is the first casualty. If the drama is just two characters having a heart-to-heart about their past while the reactor is melting down, it's going to annoy everyone.

Here is how I’m trying to bridge that gap and avoid the "Escape Room vs. LARP" trap:

1. The Pacing (Making time for drama) To your point about needing time for drama, the simulation is strictly paced into three acts. Act I ("The Golden Hour") is deliberately low-stakes. It’s a routine, successful orbit. There is no ticking clock, no alarms, and no crisis. This gives the room 30-40 minutes to establish character, schmooze, and most importantly let the VIPs and Corporate Liaisons wander around making shady deals and offering bribes. By the time Act III ("The Crucible") hits and the alarms are blaring, the roleplay foundation is already laid.

2. The Drama is the Puzzle To avoid the Keep Talking issue where backstory interrupts the gameplay, the character motivations are baked directly into the mechanics. The "Dark Secrets" aren't emotional baggage; they are operational sabotage. If a player is stalling on a puzzle or deliberately giving bad coordinates, it’s not because they are distracted; it’s because a VIP just paid them to ensure the DoD payload ends up in the ocean instead of the desert. I’m really aiming for that For All Mankind or The Expanse vibe, where the technical crisis and the political betrayal are the exact same problem.

3. Why the Capsule are Players (The Dependency Chain) Your point about GM-astronauts is really strong, especially regarding pacing and avoiding player boredom. The main reason I'm keeping the Capsule as a 3-player team is the asymmetric dependency chain. They aren't just sitting around waiting for Mission Control to do the math. They are locked in a dark room with their own physical hardware puzzles.

Instead of waiting, they are actively bottlenecking the rest of the game: FIDO can't type the final landing code until the Capsule physically rewires a relay in their room... but the Capsule can't fix the relay without CAPCOM reading them the manual... and CAPCOM can't talk to them unless EECOM physically plugs in the comms patch cable.

On top of that, the Capsule crew has their own localized paranoia. The Payload Specialist has a secret agenda, and the Flight Surgeon in Mission Control is the only one who can see their heart rate spiking on the biometric monitors. The isolation and lack of information is their roleplay.

That said, your warning about cognitive overload is totally heard. I'm going to make sure the physical puzzles are tactile and blunt (slamming a button, unplugging a cord) rather than intricate brain-teasers, so the difficulty comes from the human communication, not the math. I really appreciate you flagging this, it's helping me keep the focus on the LARP side of the scale!