Traveller Sandbox: The Rough Patch

I can blame it on the pain in the ass it is to write while sitting on a bed in a wooden hut in a shithole country, but the simple truth of the matter is that when you find yourself making more characters for a half-formed sandbox than you do writing patron encounters or other GM material, you have hit a wall.

Wall, meet head.  Head, meet wall.

I came up with one sub-sector plotline I am pleased with:  The Subsector Governor has been creating, through conquest, an empire of his own.  A flagrant violation of Imperial Laws of War, what makes this interesting is that the Third Imperium has done NOTHING.  There has been no fallout from the Sector or Imperial administration about this.  Needless to say, the subsector has no idea what to do about this.  I've got ideas for the whys and wherefores, as well as how the players can get involved.  I'd also like them to have the choice to NOT get involved and just have the events play out in the background, with second and third order effects being the ones the character sees.

Other than that, I'm not seeing much in the way of intrasubsector plots.

I've got a whopping three patron encounters written.  I set a pretty ambitious goal of 150.  Clearly, that is excessive.  I'd like to have a good number for the systems that are actually players, tapering off as the interest in the system wanes.  I'm actually thinking of getting jiggy with 760 Patrons, 1001 Characters, and a bunch of system names in a hat.  Take a patron or a character, the system description, and apply vigorous Referee hammer blows to make it work.

This is kind of a venting post, so if some of you more experienced GMs have any advice for getting over the hump, I'm listening.