Ok, I have decided I would like to move away from the layered system and towards a player-choice centered system. A system where doubt is the real issue. Here is what I've come up with, and I'm wondering what people think.

The five Traits are rated with 4-9 ranks. Human average is three ranks, your always better than that.

The mechanic deals with both cool and doubt. Cool embraced the high-action element of the game, and Doubt embraces the 'Are you a Karbon?' issue.

For action resolution you compare acting rank to opposing rank. If the acting rank meets or exceeds the opposing it's a positive action, otherwise a negative.

Positive actions simply succeed without a dice roll. They can fail if the player wants, allowing them to earn cool with vivid description of the why they failed.

Negative actions require a 'penalty' roll. This is a six-sided die plus the excess opposing ranks (max. of +3). A certain amount of penalty is gained based upon the roll. Now they have a choice. Fail and earn no penalty, or Succeed and earn the rolled penalty. Unless the penalty is blocked by character specifics (lace/history) it will become doubt,

You can see the mechanic in the new evolving PDF here:
http://karbon.greyearth.com/pdf/Karbon_2.pdf

That's it. Does that sound like it achieves the two aforementioned goals? Any ideas for improvement or streamlining?

Thanks,
Jason