The game I want is a terraforming / mega factory game.
The premise is that the galaxy has been thoroughly explored and that all life worlds have already been exploited. The population of the galaxy continues to expand and the only solution up until this point is to build space habitats which are not all that desirable.
This has led to a new industry of terraforming planets and then selling them to the galactic market for a hefty profit.
You are one such fledgling corporation. In the beginning you have your capital ship with its storage, some basic manufacturing capabilities, and access to the galactic market. It also has a number of shuttles and other vehicles to aid in the terraforming effort. There is also an AI assistant to help the player out, which keeps track of the issues with a given world. It also will estimate the profitability of terraforming a given world.
A player has access to the galactic map and can look at all star systems and pick suitable planets at their leisure. Some of the planet types are frozen, barren, volcanic, and tomb worlds.
Each type of planet has several sub types and some other metrics, like metal richness, atmospheric pressure / composition, goldilocks rating (how suitable it is just by its orbit) and other factors. Then other variants such as a tomb world has a super toxic atmosphere from pollution opposed to one from a nuclear war. You may have an ice world that is a frozen ocean world which means if you thaw it out, there is no land, etc… I think you get the idea. Planets may have advantages too, such that tomb worlds will have loads of advanced materials available. You can mine steel or other things directly from the ruined cities.
The theater of operation for a player is the entire solar system, not just that one planet. A planet may lack an essential mineral, which can be found elsewhere in the solar system or at worst, be bought on the galactic market. I envision the player running around said world similar to games like Satisfactory.
The general game play loop is something like, the player picks a world, lands on it and explores it a bit (you have a full map, this is the far future after all) plans a strategy around the terraform operation. Then they start making their mega factory to build and power the various things needed for terraforming.
Once their planet gets close to the point where some biological life can survive, they may switch to a genetics lab and tweak some parameters of some life forms to help terraform the world or perhaps just for biodiversity. For example, if this was a toxic world, creating a plankton or mold that ate said toxins might help cleanup the world.
When it is said and done, the player can now move around the world and see the beautiful world they have made before they sell it to the highest bidder and move on to the next project.
The advancement of the player’s company comes in several ways. First off, there is no real research in this game. Everything has been invented already. However, various galactic entities own the license to these technologies. They player can either buy the manufactured item from the market, or for a much more expensive price buy the license to make said item themselves.
A player may also upgrade the capital ship with things like more storage space or increased manufacturing ability. It can get tiresome building the same starter factory setup over and over, so why not just store it on your capital ship and bring with you to the next world?
The player can earn money a few ways. The most profitable is selling a terraformed world, however, you can exploit a world for certain resources and simply sell them for credits. There may also be artifacts to be found and sold, as well as some bonus objectives.
Anyway, I just want to play this game. Someone please make it. I hereby give up any claim on this idea, so you can totally steal this idea and owe me nothing.