[AlexanderHowl]

~$700M is not a lot for a spacecraft, and it has the advantage that is large enough to provide 0.5g, so you can provide transportation for normal unaugmented humans without difficulty, but it is your choice. However, the design that I gave would have a crew of 125 (20 control, 80 technicians, and 25 support), so the vast majority of the people would be NPCs. In that case, I would suggest that the PCs be officers, similar to Star Trek, though the majority of officers would be NPCs.

One of the issues with any realistic design is economics (which can be waived in the case of space opera). Now, one advantage of a cycler over a magsail design is that it is really cheap per ton moved (the cycler costs 1/15th as much per ton moved), though this is somewhat balanced by the fact that they take five times long to travel (and they require connections to magsails). I would say that they cost 50% to move cargo and passengers as a magsail design, so there is a place for them economically.