I've been idly pondering a spaceship game sort of halfway between Honor Harrington, Galactic Civilizations 2, and Galaxy on Fire HD. It's going to be between a 2 and 3 on the Mohs Sci-fi Hardness Scale.
2. The universe is full of Applied Phlebotinum with more to be found behind every star, but the Phlebotinum is dealt with in a fairly consistent fashion despite its lack of correspondence with reality and, in-world, is considered to lie within the realm of scientific inquiry. Works like E. E. “Doc” Smith's Lensman series, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Star Trek: The Original Series, and StarCraft fall in this category.
A subclass of this class (arguably 2.5 on the scale) contains stories that are generally sound, except the physics aren't our own. Plot aside, they are often a philosophical exploration of a concept no longer considered true (such as Aristotelian physics), or never true in the first place (e.g. two spatial dimensions instead of three). Some of Arthur C. Clarke's stories fall here. However, given the overlap with fantasy, it can prove tricky to even classify a story as SF.
3. Physics Plus: Stories in this class once again have multiple forms of Applied Phlebotinum, but in contrast to the prior class, the author aims to justify these creations with real and invented natural laws — and these creations and others from the same laws will turn up again and again in new contexts. Works like Schlock Mercenary, David Weber's Honor Harrington series, David Brin's Uplift series, and the 2003-2009 Battlestar Galactica fall in this class. Most Real Robot shows fall somewhere between Classes 2 and 3.
I'd like to play around with numbers and such beforehand, though. There's going to be initial choices of background, allegiance, XO specialty, crew specialty, etc before coming to the ship purchase.
I was thinking of using the numbers from here as a baseline for most hyper capable ships:
http://galciv.wikia.com/wiki/hullwith a few modifications to make cargo ships bigger, multiplying HP by 10, rounding capacity, etc. Carriers would probably be included.
I'd use acceleration and propulsion from the Honorverse as well, and possibly names for sides, as well.
Depending on allegiance, you'd have different objectives and plots. I've got plenty of ideas.
Anyone interested?