Second Exploration Era - game about exploring other planets in 1920s

Hi there.

All of the questions are at the bottom.

So with my Tabletop RPG group we had this brainstorm about designing our own RPG setting. In a nutshell it's premise is that somewhere by the end or shortly after Great War there was a contact with giant devices that were a way to travel between planets. That caused various countries to start exploring and eventually creating new colonies.
Then i had idea that it can be a good theme for a board game. I quickly came up with main mechanics and then some more tweaks to them. I have some thinking done about how it will look like, but yet, none of this has any physycal form yet. It's all in my mind.
So i wrote down something resembling a pitch, so i'll give it to you below, then i'll try to explain how i see the design process for that will go, what i want in this game, and then what components and look i have in mind.

Imagine all great nations in the world started exploring distant lands again. But now that are not continents, but planets. And it takes place shortly after Great war.
Players are important members of such expedition. But although they all work for common goal, it's their name thay want to be remebered,
During the game, players will be discovering new places, in secret or officialy, then gathering reaserch staff, biologists, geologists, archeologists and military, and finally reaserching discovered places to earn fame and recognition.
Players are competing over places to reaserch, represented as cards that are initially face down, but actions can flip them or allow players to look at them. Game turn consist of rolling one common pool of dice, and then each player choses one die and puts it on action board to execute that action, provided it has matching symbol. Once 2 dice are chosen, turn ends and another turn starts.

So there it is.
Main things i want mechanically in this game are:

- Worker placement, but partially random, ie not always all the actions are available
- possibility of "I know something you don't know"
- variable player powers
- possibility of few different setups

And how I see that in this game:

The action board (think agricola or sth) has on each action field an icon or icons. To take action, player is required to take one dice with matching symbol and put it on that field. Beacause the dicepool is reroled at the start of turn, it changes what action and in what amount will be available.
The places to discover are represended by cards. Each card has a value, name, required reaserchers and optionally a triggered effect. Thay are layed in 3x3 or 3x4 grid at the star of the game and players can flip them, or look at them. Other actions allow to take reaserchers to their expedition. And there is reaserch action, that flips a card and reaserches it, if you have right staff. After location is reaserched, player takes it's card and new one is placed face down.
Each player has one persona that has a trait or an ability. aditionally each of this characters comes with small action board, that extends main action board. It has two reasons. It allows to scale amount of actions to number of players, and two, since they are different, depending on characters chosen, different action set is available. Also the dice pool will be made of 2 neutral dice, and 2 of each used caracters dice (that can have different distribution of symbols or even different symbols)

Above should fulfill the things i want in this.

In my opinion that is to much to design at once, so i imagine following steps to create this:

1) Design cards and main actions. This is to test card flipping and reaserchers gathering mechanics, and also to some extent poit values of cards.
2) Add main action board. This is to extend and somehov vary available actions, and also check this worker placement mechanic with existing cards.
3) Add characters. That is to create and check "hero powers" and also to create and check character action boards.
4) Add symbols to action fields and add dice to game. this is to check how dice change gameplay and to tweak it accordingly

After any of this steps, i can get something that is good game and will be considering if it should stop at that moment. And then, i can skip some of the mechanics, if they do not work, and that would change the next steps.

Visions of mechanics and gameplay are out of the way, now onto how i see its graphics and looks look like.
There will be 5 groups of components in the game after 4th step. Those will be:

- Location cards
- Character Cards
- Action boards
- Reaserchers markers
- Dice

Location cards i have in mind are horizontally oriented poker sized cards. Visually they would look like page or piece of notepad. They would have name on top right, in the middle drawing (pencil sketch, or pencil sketch transistioning into full color art), bottom right optional short effect text. On top left coin with points value, and below that coin there would be amount of reaserchers of each kind needed to reaserch that card. Form of this indicators will depend on what markers will be used.
Caracter cards will be something visually resembling a file on that person. So photo, name, and trait or ability somewhere below. Kind like style that various arkham franchise make characters. Not much of thought was put into this one.
Action boards will be represented by birdview of expedition camp, with various tents and so on. on tents or other places there will be half opaque field with rules and so.
Reaserchers markers will be either colored cubes, or carboard punchout markers.
Each character will have one or two dice in their own colour, and then there will be some neutral dice. neutral dice will habe 3 different symbols in 3-2-1 distribition. Character dice might change that distribition and/or add new symbols.

I would like to fir all of this in either FFG LCG sized box, or carcasonne expansion sized box. Not sure yet.

Question time! I will be greatly thankful for any comments, suggestions and anwsers for the following:

How do you find this theme idea?
Do you think that mechanics are conected with theme? Or maybe it feels pasted on?
Does my design in step process make sense? If not, why, and how should i adjust/change it.
Do you know any games that use most, if not all, of mechanics i'm mentioning?
Would you play this game based on pitch? If not, would you play this game based on further explanation?
Is the graphical design something that makes sense? I'm asking both in "how it lokks" department, and "isn't this look a problem with seeng what part makes what?" department. I know i don't have anything to show yet, but maybe someone tried something similar and it looked eiter awesome or not.
Any other suggestions?

Just one thing to add. Writing all this down made it feel like it's beginning to appear, so joining this forum certainly was good idea.

Once more will apreciate anything you have to say about my idea.
Thanks,
Mat