So I was thinking about doing a suggestion game. I have a background planned out, but there's a few different games I feel would work well in the same setting.
The setting:
It is close to the year 3000. Humanity has not left the solar system, but we have colonized six bodies off-Earth, each with its own flavor of unobtanium to facilitate space trade.
Earth: A planet of twenty billion individuals. Society revolves around VR tech and a simulated universe, and the majority of the population is plugged in at underground sites although there remains a minority who prefer to live in the abandoned urban jungles.
Venus: Originally founded as an aerostat research colony that became mostly self-sufficient. Now they're a hub for Sundivers who mine cosmic strings from the vicinity of the sun.
Luna (the Moon): Titanium, which is good for lightweight ship parts, not so much structure for which aluminium is much better. There's also some phosphorous and volatiles. Mostly aligned with Earth rather than the colonies.
Mars: Phosphorous and alien artifacts. There was a definite alien presence in the solar system, and Mars is the only place where the remnants have been preserved decently well.
Ceres: Home to a self-replicating nanotechnology called Logitree, found in the Bright Spots the Dawn orbiter spotted, used for quantum computing.
Europa: Originally this colony started as a heavy mining operation to explore the moon's subsurface ocean, where they found alien artifacts. Now it's the system's largest shipyard save Luna and a hub for outer-system travel.
Neptune: The magnetic field of Neptune is partially caused by magnetic monopoles originating in the planet's mantle and mined by humans. Uranus also has some, but not as many as Neptune.
Honorable Mention: Titan
Titan was first exploited in the early 2400's after hydrocarbon imports from Earth started declining. Earth retains a huge ground military presence here, it's only major forces outside of the Earth-Luna system and some recent depots. While Colonials exploit the hydrocarbon reserves regularly, Earth only currently allows this in exchange for Logitree and cosmic string export treaties that favor Earth.
However, tension has been increasing the past century due to a large-scale extrasolar mining project started nine centuries ago. Robotic miners were sent to the star Beta Pictoris to build up factories and create antimatter refineries out of the star's debris disk. Now the first shipment is set to arrive in fifty years, and both the Colonials and the Terrans have built up navies to compete for dominance of the solar system in preparation. Large-scale warfare has never happened before in the solar system, so space combat doctrine is yet to be tried and tested.
Players would suggest actions for a ragtag group of space junkies who decided to try and make a profit during the war, either by smuggling resources to Earth or the Colonies, salvaging after battles, fighting as mercenaries, or simply piracy and opportunism.
You'd have a small freighter at first able to do basic trade runs, but there's no reason a freighter can't have a gun attached and be made into a warship.
Instead of trying to make a profit, the game instead revolves around a hospital ship maintained by some non-profit fund, meant to rescue survivors after space battles occur. You'd have to contend with governments asking (and bribing) you to hand over prisoners, dealing with looters and scavengers who want to have that shiny stasis-pod tech, and dealing with borders and military law to get the wounded into a proper hospita, among other things.
Basically WW2 in space. I haven't hosted an arms race game before, but what I had in mind is that players would own a tech company with a neutral alignment in the Antimatter War. They'd end up either siding with one or waiting it out and selling tech to both sides. Either way it would involve observing battles and developing new tech, and maybe some politics.
I could also host a more traditional RtD in the setting, but I've learned to dislike games where everyone's forced to share the same ship. If anyone has any suggestions on how to handle that while retaining some sense of player cooperation, I'd appreciate it.