Depth of Downtime

Determine how involved your group wants downtime to be at the start of the game. If your players vary greatly in preference, you might need to find a middle ground, or some way to give the players least interested in downtime something they would find compelling. You can adjust downtime depth as the game goes along, and you might find it becomes more important to the players as their connection to the setting grows stronger. Pay attention to the amount of real-world time you spend in downtime and the level of detail. Downtime should rarely last a whole session. Usually, a half hour between significant adventures is about right, and 15 minutes for shorter lulls in the action, such as when PCs return to a port of call briefly in the middle of an adventure. You can extend this time as needed for more detailed roleplaying scenes. For the level of detail, it's important to give more than just an overview, but often the basics will do. “A fleet of ships await boarding clearance, and a uniformed vesk officer puts you to work double-checking manifests” might do for using Piloting to Earn Income, and “Your shipment of UPBs arrives late, but you're able to complete the armor” could be enough for Crafting. Go deeper if the player sets out to do something specific or asks questions you think have potential for an interesting story, but be careful with too much detail, as you run the risk of boring most of the table with minutiae.