Jhamin

If I had it to do over, I'd rationalize the point totals on a lot of villains.  The Mega Threats like Destroyer, Mechanon, Menton, The Warlord, etc are *way* to high to actually use in a normal game.  Not every villain should be within reach of starting characters but the Destroyer is potentially straight up Killing most PCs built to standard recommended stats in like 2 hits with those 30D6 Destroyer-Beams while their 10-12 DC attacks are doing less than 5 stun to him. 
I keep seeing people on the forums mention that they never use most of the iconic villains because they either need to be brought way down or they will just no-sell anything the heroes throw at them.  There needs to be a lot more of a range.
I'd love to see a lot more solo villains that are a match for a single hero instead of being designed to take on a team.  Sometimes a PC needs an antagonist more than the team needs one.
 
I agree with the others who would like to move the timeline up a bit.  Either move origins up so they started their villainy in 2017 or so or start passing the torch to a new generation.  At this point all origins that relate to WWII or Vietnam need to also include longevity as part of the power suite.  Someone who fought in WWII as a young adult is like 80 years old now.  Someone who got their powers in 1989 at the age of 22 is now 53 years old, which is ancient in the world of most supers comics.
 
Also: It's 2020, Red Winter has perhaps aged out as a concept.  They belong in a time travel adventure or need to be portrayed as crazy out of touch.  The Red & Gold Hammer & Sickle evil communists don't really work as a straight concept anymore.  Even their "trying to revive the Soviet Union" thing doesn't work when it's been gone for 25+ years.  Now that I think of it, Time-Travelling Communists who want to steal the tech of today to prop up the failing Soviet Union of 1987 actually sounds like a lot of fun......
 

If I had it to do over, I'd rationalize the point totals on a lot of villains.  The Mega Threats like Destroyer, Mechanon, Menton, The Warlord, etc are *way* to high to actually use in a normal game.  Not every villain should be within reach of starting characters but the Destroyer is potentially straight up Killing most PCs built to standard recommended stats in like 2 hits with those 30D6 Destroyer-Beams while their 10-12 DC attacks are doing less than 5 stun to him. 
I keep seeing people on the forums mention that they never use most of the iconic villains because they either need to be brought way down or they will just no-sell anything the heroes throw at them.  There needs to be a lot more of a range.
I'd love to see a lot more solo villains that are a match for a single hero instead of being designed to take on a team.  Sometimes a PC needs an antagonist more than the team needs one.
 
I agree with the others who would like to move the timeline up a bit.  Either move origins up so they started their villainy in 2017 or so or start passing the torch to a new generation.  At this point all origins that relate to WWII or Vietnam need to also include longevity as part of the power suite.  Someone who fought in WWII as a young adult is like 80 years old now.  Someone who got their powers in 1989 at the age of 22 is now 53 years old, which is ancient in the world of most supers comics.
 
Also: It's 2020, Red Winter has perhaps aged out as a concept.  They belong in a time travel adventure or need to be portrayed as crazy out of touch.  The Red & Gold Hammer & Sickle evil communists don't really work as a straight concept anymore.  Even their "trying to revive the Soviet Union" thing doesn't work when it's been gone for 25+ years.  Now that I think of it, Time-Travelling Communists who want to steal the tech of today to prop up the failing Soviet Union of 1987 actually sounds like a lot of fun......
 

I've found that since around 5th edition or so, Doctor Destroyer works better as a Thanos or Darkseid analogue than as a Doctor Doom analogue.  In which case I'd probably move him full time to his hidden nation of worshipers and I'd shift his minions to be less about the mental conditioning and more about the unbridled worship of a superior, visionary master.

I've found that since around 5th edition or so, Doctor Destroyer works better as a Thanos or Darkseid analogue than as a Doctor Doom analogue.  In which case I'd probably move him full time to his hidden nation of worshipers and I'd shift his minions to be less about the mental conditioning and more about the unbridled worship of a superior, visionary master.

I'm actually running a Teen Champions game with my players.  So far most of the enemies I've used are home-brewed as there isn't much official that is in the right point range.
 
I've used
- individual members of the Cirque Sinister (the whole team is *way* too powerful for teens), emphasizing the Circus of the Weird aspect.
- A time solder from the future the heros eventually figured out was a possible future incarnation of one PCs very normal girlfriend.  She *hates* them for all the damage their future selves have done to the world.  (Sort of puts a shadow over all that potential everyone keeps telling them they have)
- A Daughter of the Black Mask clan who is not first in line to take over the mantle.  Calls herself Silhouette, which isn't a big hit with her Godmother. (She is actually a hero, but I"m playing her as female 16 year old Bruce Wayne stuck in High School because Alfred wants him to have a normal life instead of training with monks in a hidden fortress somewhere.  Thinks the PCs are a bunch of amateurs.)
- I'm also using Generation Viper as an idea but I've recast most of them with homebrews.
- I stole Chessclub from Mutants & Masterminds.  He is a teenager who found his dad's legion of robotic chessmen after dear old dad went to jail for holding the city hostage.  Impulsive kid with *way* more firepower than he has earned or can control
 

I think the biggest barrier to most Sci-Fi games is having rules all the players understand.  Not game mechanics, but universe rules like
Are there Transporters?
If so, can we just beam explosives over to enemy ships?
Why Not?
Do we have FTL?
can we rig captured ships do FTL rams into the big enemy stations?
Why Not?
 
Sci Fi covers a *lot* of ground and you need everyone in the group to be on the same page for the game to work.  Most established universes have rules about what actions do and don't work, and they are very different from universe to universe.  Without a common consensus on how this universe works you get players expecting Firefly and getting Chronicles of Riddick.  Then people are unhappy because they aren't playing the game they expected too.  Or worse, a player who made a Babylon 5 style military guy, a player who made a Starship Troopers military guy and a player who made a Battlestar Galactica military guy all showing up for a Stargate Universe campaign.  Now the party doesn't even gel.
 
If you just declare "we are playing Star Trek Next Gen" and then enforce the rules of that setting onto the game you avoid lots of weird arguments.  Making impassioned speeches works, because it's TNG.  No, you can't beam the side of the Klingon antimatter container out into space and make them explode.  Why?  Because they never do so you can't.  You solve your problems with klingons by appealing to their Honor or by arming Photon Torpedoes, you don't release Nanite Bombs from a shuttle you converted into a fighter even though they totally have Nanites because of episode XX.
 
Or do that.  But then the whole game becomes about the players and the GM out-gambiting each other by exploring the poorly thought through implications of most popular Sci-Fi Franchises.

RPGs are a communal experience and need to be experienced and enjoyed by the players.  Without good rules about tone and what's possible in universe things get really frustrating.  If you obey the rules of a universe everyone is familiar with you will be fine, if you homebrew a universe or jumble one up you end up with players who either are confused or have to read 40 pages of campaign notes before they make characters.

I think the biggest barrier to most Sci-Fi games is having rules all the players understand.  Not game mechanics, but universe rules like
Are there Transporters?
If so, can we just beam explosives over to enemy ships?
Why Not?
Do we have FTL?
can we rig captured ships do FTL rams into the big enemy stations?
Why Not?
 
Sci Fi covers a *lot* of ground and you need everyone in the group to be on the same page for the game to work.  Most established universes have rules about what actions do and don't work, and they are very different from universe to universe.  Without a common consensus on how this universe works you get players expecting Firefly and getting Chronicles of Riddick.  Then people are unhappy because they aren't playing the game they expected too.  Or worse, a player who made a Babylon 5 style military guy, a player who made a Starship Troopers military guy and a player who made a Battlestar Galactica military guy all showing up for a Stargate Universe campaign.  Now the party doesn't even gel.
 
If you just declare "we are playing Star Trek Next Gen" and then enforce the rules of that setting onto the game you avoid lots of weird arguments.  Making impassioned speeches works, because it's TNG.  No, you can't beam the side of the Klingon antimatter container out into space and make them explode.  Why?  Because they never do so you can't.  You solve your problems with klingons by appealing to their Honor or by arming Photon Torpedoes, you don't release Nanite Bombs from a shuttle you converted into a fighter even though they totally have Nanites because of episode XX.
 
Or do that.  But then the whole game becomes about the players and the GM out-gambiting each other by exploring the poorly thought through implications of most popular Sci-Fi Franchises.

RPGs are a communal experience and need to be experienced and enjoyed by the players.  Without good rules about tone and what's possible in universe things get really frustrating.  If you obey the rules of a universe everyone is familiar with you will be fine, if you homebrew a universe or jumble one up you end up with players who either are confused or have to read 40 pages of campaign notes before they make characters.

Lots of us want to game in custom Sci-Fi settings.  Most of us just don't have the patience to actually communicate the setting to players or have players invested enough to digest our world info.
Fun Fact: The Expanse started out as a RPG universe that the author was trying to get made into an MMO.  Someone pointed out that the game notes he had written to get players oriented were more extensive than most novels he had read and actually werent painful to read through.  So the author got a writing partner & converted his setting into published novels.

I think the biggest barrier to most Sci-Fi games is having rules all the players understand.  Not game mechanics, but universe rules like
Are there Transporters?
If so, can we just beam explosives over to enemy ships?
Why Not?
Do we have FTL?
can we rig captured ships do FTL rams into the big enemy stations?
Why Not?
 
Sci Fi covers a *lot* of ground and you need everyone in the group to be on the same page for the game to work.  Most established universes have rules about what actions do and don't work, and they are very different from universe to universe.  Without a common consensus on how this universe works you get players expecting Firefly and getting Chronicles of Riddick.  Then people are unhappy because they aren't playing the game they expected too.  Or worse, a player who made a Babylon 5 style military guy, a player who made a Starship Troopers military guy and a player who made a Battlestar Galactica military guy all showing up for a Stargate Universe campaign.  Now the party doesn't even gel.
 
If you just declare "we are playing Star Trek Next Gen" and then enforce the rules of that setting onto the game you avoid lots of weird arguments.  Making impassioned speeches works, because it's TNG.  No, you can't beam the side of the Klingon antimatter container out into space and make them explode.  Why?  Because they never do so you can't.  You solve your problems with klingons by appealing to their Honor or by arming Photon Torpedoes, you don't release Nanite Bombs from a shuttle you converted into a fighter even though they totally have Nanites because of episode XX.
 
Or do that.  But then the whole game becomes about the players and the GM out-gambiting each other by exploring the poorly thought through implications of most popular Sci-Fi Franchises.

RPGs are a communal experience and need to be experienced and enjoyed by the players.  Without good rules about tone and what's possible in universe things get really frustrating.  If you obey the rules of a universe everyone is familiar with you will be fine, if you homebrew a universe or jumble one up you end up with players who either are confused or have to read 40 pages of campaign notes before they make characters.

Lots of us want to game in custom Sci-Fi settings.  Most of us just don't have the patience to actually communicate the setting to players or have players invested enough to digest our world info.
Fun Fact: The Expanse started out as a RPG universe that the author was trying to get made into an MMO.  Someone pointed out that the game notes he had written to get players oriented were more extensive than most novels he had read and actually werent painful to read through.  So the author got a writing partner & converted his setting into published novels.

Lots of us want to game in custom Sci-Fi settings.  Most of us just don't have the patience to actually communicate the setting to players or have players invested enough to digest our world info.
Fun Fact: The Expanse started out as a RPG universe that the author was trying to get made into an MMO.  Someone pointed out that the game notes he had written to get players oriented were more extensive than most novels he had read and actually werent painful to read through.  So the author got a writing partner & converted his setting into published novels.

I think the biggest barrier to most Sci-Fi games is having rules all the players understand.  Not game mechanics, but universe rules like
Are there Transporters?
If so, can we just beam explosives over to enemy ships?
Why Not?
Do we have FTL?
can we rig captured ships do FTL rams into the big enemy stations?
Why Not?
 
Sci Fi covers a *lot* of ground and you need everyone in the group to be on the same page for the game to work.  Most established universes have rules about what actions do and don't work, and they are very different from universe to universe.  Without a common consensus on how this universe works you get players expecting Firefly and getting Chronicles of Riddick.  Then people are unhappy because they aren't playing the game they expected too.  Or worse, a player who made a Babylon 5 style military guy, a player who made a Starship Troopers military guy and a player who made a Battlestar Galactica military guy all showing up for a Stargate Universe campaign.  Now the party doesn't even gel.
 
If you just declare "we are playing Star Trek Next Gen" and then enforce the rules of that setting onto the game you avoid lots of weird arguments.  Making impassioned speeches works, because it's TNG.  No, you can't beam the side of the Klingon antimatter container out into space and make them explode.  Why?  Because they never do so you can't.  You solve your problems with klingons by appealing to their Honor or by arming Photon Torpedoes, you don't release Nanite Bombs from a shuttle you converted into a fighter even though they totally have Nanites because of episode XX.
 
Or do that.  But then the whole game becomes about the players and the GM out-gambiting each other by exploring the poorly thought through implications of most popular Sci-Fi Franchises.

RPGs are a communal experience and need to be experienced and enjoyed by the players.  Without good rules about tone and what's possible in universe things get really frustrating.  If you obey the rules of a universe everyone is familiar with you will be fine, if you homebrew a universe or jumble one up you end up with players who either are confused or have to read 40 pages of campaign notes before they make characters.

I think the biggest barrier to most Sci-Fi games is having rules all the players understand.  Not game mechanics, but universe rules like
Are there Transporters?
If so, can we just beam explosives over to enemy ships?
Why Not?
Do we have FTL?
can we rig captured ships do FTL rams into the big enemy stations?
Why Not?
 
Sci Fi covers a *lot* of ground and you need everyone in the group to be on the same page for the game to work.  Most established universes have rules about what actions do and don't work, and they are very different from universe to universe.  Without a common consensus on how this universe works you get players expecting Firefly and getting Chronicles of Riddick.  Then people are unhappy because they aren't playing the game they expected too.  Or worse, a player who made a Babylon 5 style military guy, a player who made a Starship Troopers military guy and a player who made a Battlestar Galactica military guy all showing up for a Stargate Universe campaign.  Now the party doesn't even gel.
 
If you just declare "we are playing Star Trek Next Gen" and then enforce the rules of that setting onto the game you avoid lots of weird arguments.  Making impassioned speeches works, because it's TNG.  No, you can't beam the side of the Klingon antimatter container out into space and make them explode.  Why?  Because they never do so you can't.  You solve your problems with klingons by appealing to their Honor or by arming Photon Torpedoes, you don't release Nanite Bombs from a shuttle you converted into a fighter even though they totally have Nanites because of episode XX.
 
Or do that.  But then the whole game becomes about the players and the GM out-gambiting each other by exploring the poorly thought through implications of most popular Sci-Fi Franchises.

RPGs are a communal experience and need to be experienced and enjoyed by the players.  Without good rules about tone and what's possible in universe things get really frustrating.  If you obey the rules of a universe everyone is familiar with you will be fine, if you homebrew a universe or jumble one up you end up with players who either are confused or have to read 40 pages of campaign notes before they make characters.

Sometimes a Naked Advantage is the only way to build a power. For example, Guardian's glitterbombs (Darkness) don't affect himself or his clients, because they're wearing special polarizing glasses that counteract the sparkling dust. I decided to model this with Personal Immunity, Usable by Other as a Naked Advantage.

It took me long enough to find this, and I overlooked it more than once.  
 

 
Champions III, p 24.  
 
Edit to add:  While it might have thrown additional gasoline on the Great Linked Debate fire back in the day, it also assumes that the Powers are designed to go off together.  Essentially, what Hero Designer refers to as a "compound Power".  X, plus Y, plus Z. 
 

Don’t forget the trailer fight in Raising Arizona! 
 
And if if you have HBO, I have got to put a pitch in for the most recent episode of Barry. It is the funniest, craziest, extended half-hour fight scene you’ll ever see. Hands down. 

My Champions Universe ran for 20 years with a gradually cycling series of players.  Its mostly inspired by a mix of Marvel Comics and the published Champions 4th and 5th edition universes with some homebrew hero and villain teams.  In retrospect it was pretty optimistic without being a parody.  Primus was a valued ally and while there were tons of rotten government secret programs and anti-mutant Generals in charge of R&D projects, they were always shut down when the PCs exposed them.
The players saved the world several times, and played many of the published adventures.  (They never forgave Black Harlequin for Omega World from "Champions Battlegrounds".
Some of the highlights:
- We did a big summer crossover with the Despoiler actually damaging the Keystone of Reality.  When the dust settled we had the 5th edition universe.  
- Captain Future's backstory from 4th Edition Golden Age Champions was expanded into a super-heroy time police, with a Captain Future in every heroic age.  The PCs said good by to their buddy the Star Trek TNG themed Captain Future and said Hello to his Matrix Themed replacement at the turn of the Millennium.
- A PC who was a member of the royal family of Cotopia, his vaguely Monaco like homeland, had to take back his country after Brother Bone launched a new inquisition against their decadent ways.
- Foxbat stole a time machine & led the PCs (and the Captain Future Corps) on a bewildering cross-time adventure before he succeeded in his master plan.  When they returned to the present they discovered that he had altered history so that the Star Wars Prequals were different and the fandom agreed they had surpassed the originals in every way.  Lucasfilm was making plans to buy Disney.  The PCs decided to look the other way and just keep living in "FoxBat's Future"
- An Angelic PC who escaped from the war between Heaven & Hell during the Despoiler incident used a favor with the Powers that Be to end Mechanon's threat.  She expected them to kill or banish him.  Instead  he ended up becoming a heroic protector of Organic Beings & Is now up there with Tetsuronin as one of the most powerful heroes in the world.

We retired the old game a number of years ago, but are about to start up a new Ravenswood academy game set in 2019 in the same game universe.  I plan to let the characters the Players remember from the old game to still be around, aged 10 years.  New characters, or characters they never encountered will match the 6th edition versions.  This should make it easier to express that time has passed & new heros and villains have stepped up.  One PC is the heroic Mechanon's "Son".  He is the result of The Engineer's interference in one of Mechanon's projects, making her the PC's "Mother"

Maybe, maybe not. 
 
Say you're doing a Teen heroes "super school" thing. There are things that, to my mind, it just has to have: A mall, for example. Super parents, too. Those might not be part of the original concept, but they just seem like an irresistable retcon, so why not start with them? Underground passages, secret doors, secret identities. This is all a bit weird in the frequent superhero-private-school setting, and their absence is a problem in the Ravenswood setting for CU, but with the sheer number of supers and retired supers in the Boston-Washington area in the CU, it's hard to believe that there isn't a commuter option.
 
So Midtown High in Brooklyn --or, not to toot my own horn, Tatammy High in Philadelphia-- has a teen super magnet programme. It's just secret, because secrets are cool, and because Diadem (now-retired Sentinel leader) would throw a fit if her secret identity were compromised. She's not built with a lot of rPD versus "sniper with a grudge"!
 
Okay, we've got the basics: a secret superhero programme within a large American high school. Secret underground Danger Room, whatever else you want to put down there. Records Hall, locker room, broken time machine that only needs a refibulator to work again, sentient spaceship named Martha . . . It's a comic book.
 
What else do we need? Class dynamics, of course. Rich kids, poor kids; uptown girl, downtown boy. Rivals. You may not be into this kind of thing, but you can run it with NPCs and let the players be observers. Some kind of teen super-sport. (J. K. Rowling says you have to have Quidditch. Even if you're not a jock, other people are.) Rivals.  Star-crossed relationships. Rivals. See where I'm going with this? You don't have to have an eco-system of super-schools to interact with, but the CU has already got one, and as Fleur De Pew, or whatever her name is from Harry Potter demonstrates, it is absolutely the case that you need foreign schools so that you can do your terrible foreign accent at the table. Except maybe when you introduce Tiger Squad's junior varsity. Probably don't want to go there. 
 
So when the Indian teen superheroine is hanging out with her boyfriend in the mall near his house in Philadelphia, trying to keep it on the down low because her guardian is a Hindu nationalist built on a thousand points who would turn her crush into a newt in a second if he knew about it, clearly the word comes down that the Superhero Division's training compound in Kerala State is under attack. I mean, that's just the way you do things in a superhero campaign.
 
Who is behind it? A published master villain is fine. Dr. Destroyer is active in India, for example, although for this setting one of his underbosses is a lot more appropriate. And when you wing into action to stop the attack and hopefully make sure that the girl makes bed check, you're immersed in the Indian superhero scene, which, as laid out in Champions Worldwide, is pretty extensive. 
 
This is where I think the published CU is a powerful tool, in that you have  context for all of this. The drawback is that you're drawn right into the global context. Yes, you have a listing of superheroes in India, and a few Indian supervillains, but now you're worried about what we're calling the "ecology" of the setting. It looks like India is pretty underpopulated with villains compared with the rest of the world. On the other hand, it is hard to see how the Superhero Division fends off Dr. Destroyer's little offensive by itself. That guy's got resources! Presumably, the world mobilises to beat him, but this raises the thought I was getting at when I suggested that it's hard to team up against Dr. Destroyer in one corner of the world when there are so many menaces elsewhere.
 
We see Massey's "Night Man" approach in the Vibora Bay setting. Black Mask X is more-or-less what he's talking about; the problem is that it is hard to see what she does when Dark Seraph and the Crowns of Krim take advantage of the crisis in India to wreak a little havoc. Having a hero in reserve in Vibora Bay who is a match for Dr. Destroyer . . . does not work. Having a lot more teams around the world, so that India is self-sufficient, does. On the other hand, now you need even more master villains --an approach that has been alluded to in Champions Worldwide, where China apparently has its own Dr. Destroyer just to keep the Tiger Squad busy. 
 
And now you have a situation where, on any given day, there's probably one or two climactic battles against world-threatening menaces going on somewhere in the world, and your average citizen is lined up at Starbucks getting their mocha frappa-macha-mocha-cappacino and checking their text alerts to see if the world is going to end before they can get into work because the Fair Advancers* can't defend Melbourne from an army of cloned Taipans. (Which they can't. Whoa boy is that guy scary.) 
 
___
*Matilda Waltzers? Mad Mates?

That's a great writeup.  You make a good case and you have some well-thought out examples for each decade.
 
I have a few issues with it.  I'll nitpick first and then give a broader impression.
 
4. The 1980s is what I originally envisioned as the beginning of the "Modern Era" for the BCU, but then I realized that 1980 was a very long time ago at this point.  I always have in my head that things are taking place around the year 2000 or 2010, but that just dates me in terms of when I was most active with these games.  I am now very fond of non-specific dates.  So I came up with Vanguard appearing 12 years before the Battle of Detroit and the Battle of Detroit taking place eight years before "today."  This actually makes the modern era in my setting over 20 years old.  Which nowadays seems like forever.
 
5. The villains are too old if you do this.  If Gravitar starts being active in 1990 at about age 22, then she would be 50 "today."  That's just one example.  Without tying myself down, I like the idea of just saying "basically" all villains in the published works started about the time of the Champions (or maybe a few years before).  Pretty much all the villains that were active before the Battle of Detroit are gone.  That can be a setting mystery (although I like your explanation too).  This lets me use whatever setting villains I want, without worrying about them being unrealistically old.
 
7. This is exactly what I had in mind.
 
I don't want superheroes to be quite as much of a part of the popular culture and everyday life in the BCU as in the main CU.  Some things in the CU are just a little too much for me (I've mentioned most all of them one point, but I don't like superheroes being cops in capes or testifying in court or being parts of paramilitary groups, etc.).  If Superheroes have been super active for 90 years then they seem too commonplace.  I like my "most everything super happened in the last 20 years" approach.
 
That doesn't meant that there weren't costumed avengers and such in WWII or a few superhumans or super technology users in the intervening decades (maybe a Fantastic Four-like group or the agents you describe).  It just means they aren't really part of the popular culture yet.
 
Most of my changes are designed to de-age many of the published setting heroes and villains to make them usable in a campaign that starts "today."

After an absence of 12 years from Hero System my group is starting up a Teen Champions game using 6th edition.

When last we played we ran 4th, converting to 5th a few months after FRED came out.  In game we had a big summer crisis crossover with the Despoiler damaging the keystone of reality.  This time out we are taking advantage of our time away to catch up to the "current" version of the Champs Universe and the Hero Rules.
 
The changes from 5th to 6th edition have been noticeable, but so far I'm not seeing what the controversy is.

Heh.  I once had a supervillainess make friends with Grond, gave him a My Little Pony as a gift -- and then later stole it and convinced him that one of the PC heroes took it. 
 
You can imagine the hero's confusion when Grond came charging at him, shouting, "GROND WANT PINKIE PIE!!!"