Bearing in mind that's a lot of unowned teams and bearing in mind draft approaching, should sim be delayed and if so, how long, so that we have as few AI teams drafting?

...good idea. Seems like we could give it 4 or 5 extra days. We picked up 3 owners since your post. Down to 10 vacancies now.

Next question then is at what stage?

Pause for 5 days post FA Week 2 then restart with FA week 3 irrespective of how many join?

Apologies for not seeing and thus not responding before now. God I wish I could access this from my laptop!
The pause was proper, and appreciated. I think the move to the new UI was the second “unforced exodus”, after the subscription model was introduced a year prior, so there just are not as many owners to fill spots. Moving forward, with this as the only UI, we can push for improvements and it will be more user friendly as new owners join.