Hey thanks,
Naaaaa, I'm not Aanold. But zee Austrian Oooak sure makes a good cover up
Funny enough, I also started with a word document. I would post it here, but it's all in German and I don't know what good that would do. For me, getting Mechwarrior to Spacemaster was about a conversion of principles. If you forfeit those, the game would loose an important aspect.
For instance, Fasa published lots of so called "Life Paths" in it's source books. Players would go through early childhood, schools, etc. until they had accumulated enough skills to jump into the game.
I modified this to work with skill advancement by appointing a level up to each life path stage. Optional events included. This way, the players reached lvl 4 when they finally hit the stage.
Now concerning Eve-Online. It is probabely not possible to integrate a foreign skill system into Spacemaster. As you already mentioned: Spacemaster makes nice use of the very large D100 range.
So the skill itself is not enough to emphasize the results.
How about this: Martial Arts make use of the "Rank" mechanic in which you basically have four levels of the same skill with increasing "effectiveness". The rules provide an advancement that keeps you from leveling up the most effective rank 4 from ground up. Instead you are required to gain a certain proficiency with rank 1, then you can build rank 2 and so forth.
Why not determine the most important skills in Eve-Online, then find their Spacemaster/Rolemaster counterparts. If they don't exist, create them and determine linked stats.
Now declare ranks 1-6 for advancement and discuss with the group what effects should be possible at the individual stages. Levelling up is done following the normal rules. Done!
