Often times, it seems that translating what is essentially fantasy into science fiction just doesn't work. Fundamentally the thing that makes it compelling is at odds with science fiction. With regard to wuxia and kungfu it seems that trying to translate martial arts, cool chi powers and all the other good stuff, into science fiction and space is problematic. How does someone wielding the Fist of Steel really fit into a setting where people fly spaceships, wield laser guns with bigger armies and scale. How does it retain the things that define the genre without becoming too diffuse or getting swamped by the scale?
Once you involve science (no matter how fictional that science) everything becomes more complicated: how does technology coexist with something that is quintessentially non-technological?
In pursuing these questions I started thinking of a post apocalypse spin on things. Instead of setting it in space with lots of different planets, the scale remains the same as in fatnasy: you have an earthbound kingdom. Instead of pure scifi tech (or intdeed no tech), there is steampunk (because Steampunk is cool); specifically more manageable grimier and quirkier tech. Instead of spaceships you can have airships. So a martial arts fighter type, a pure warrior character for instance, can stand in a setting like this and do cool kungfu without it having to being convoluted by the processes of translation into spacefaring SF.
In devising ideas for space opera kungfu I found myself coming up with so many different 'cool things' (like powers and abilities) and too few of them integrated well. I started feeling that a) it would be fucking hard work creating and balancing all this and b) creating coherent character concepts (or otherwise rationalising offering the player choice from any) was just a nightmare. After all it's no good if, in translation, it just becomes a.n. other sf space opera.

I kind of liked some of the SF elements. Working on the comic I hope to start when I get out of college, I figured on-ship combat would use frangible bullets, which could be stopped by (relatively) light armor. So people would carry short stabbing weapons and fight in low gravity, which opens things up visually. (That's the short version, but you get the idea)

My advice is to figure out what you liked about space in particular and see if you can't bring it in some other way. The idea of melee in zero-G becoming like high end martial arts stuff has appeal and a little justification.

Now, post-apoc has some cool bits as well. Have you considered a post-space post-apoc? Abandoned space stations with selective gravity, or a new world with alien vegetation, or things of that nature all have unique opportunities.

Essentially there are two problems.

First you either keep the fantasy stuff (kungfu and magic, etc) and just plaster it into a space context. At best you then have star wars. At worse it's contrived.

Second you find that the science aspect overrides a lot of the fantasy stuff in a bland way. The idea is to create a synergy of the two genres, but fantasy and science just don't really mix that well. There are some exceptions.

If you have Taoism in space, you are basically just creating the Force. That's all it is.

If you start using cybernetics and artificial intelligences you risk creating something that doesn't really work in gaming. I have never found hacking to be that fun. It just doesn't translate well in gaming, unfortunately, so communing with AI ancestors just...well is bland.

Have you considered getting more specific with your science fiction? Instead of post-apocalypse, it could be post-singularity. Golden age of humans plugged in and never doing anything again, and every now and then an accident happens and the system vomits out a shivering naked cyborg child.

Magic is just intuitive hacking that can mess with peoples' heads or exploit the system to make solid holograms or whatever. Would work exactly like a magic system, but would flavor the effects somewhat.

Then fighting in places with variable gravity could really mess with the way fighting happens as said above.

And the tech that people actually use and understand would be very low-end. Scrapheap pointy bits of metal pried off the godlike human machine at the end of our history or whatever. Also it would be very easy to create an excuse for godlike AI running the show.

And if you want something genuinely unexplained, or the kind of thing you could get prettier pictures of you could go with alien lifeforms of some kind. Like the really alien stuff. Meat moss or angels from Eva or genuinely spacewarping things.

Not sure if that's what you're after really, but that "sufficiently advanced technology" bit may have some life left to be squeezed out of it, if that's what you're after. It's just unlikely to really look like space opera without "The Force" being called into it as you said upthread.

I'm toying with something more akin to Streetfighter (although that's not just chinese) meets Legion of Superheroes. Games like Weapons of the Gods/Legends of the Wulin emulate a more superhero style, which is ideal for the kind of characters here. It also makes the job a lot easier in terms of not having to conform to specifics, such as martial arts (the kungfu in LotW is really just a list of chi fuelled superpowers) or Taoist magic. A more pulpy setting that leaves the player to define how they want their character, rather than forcing them into the strictures of wuxia: wulin/jianghu/more conventional martial arts. Of course that means having to design a bunch of wuxia-esque superpowers. Swings and roundabouts.

Fuck it, let's brainstorm. I've been reading DC's The Great Ten (which afaik is the closes thing western, possibly even chinese, comics has ever come to chinese superheroes):

The Ten Thousand Stars is the colloquial for the setting. It is 'the galaxy'; the place where everything happens.

Within is the Great Heaven and Earth Republic that controls most of the galaxy. The capital of the Republic is New Tien. Generally it's a fairly authoritarian environment, due to the Iron Doctrine of the People.

Part of this doctrine is the observance of 'Qi Phenomena' in the population. After the Qi Wars (conflict with and provoked by the faction calling itself the Immortals who control the worlds of the Remnant of Jade) Element Five was discovered and has led to the means by which such physiological phenomena can be studied and perhaps even controlled. Those born with Qi Powers (covering everything from preternatural ability to wield pistols and chew toothpicks, to control over corpses) have two choices: become Hsien or become outlaw. Hsien are honoured functionaries (state sponsored agents fighting the enemies of the Republic). Outlaws are...well that's obvious. The Republic cares not for troublemakers, as remnants of the old ways that led to the Qi Wars.

It should also be noted that there cannot be more than Ten Thousand awakened individuals, regardless of their origin, throughout the galaxy. Should one diminish, another usually takes his place. This fact is known to the Sutra Lords of the Dharmic Alliance.