Those of you who have been on #SpaceEmpires IRC might have heard of this, but I've been working on another programming project lately... I call it "EGGS", or "Engine for Generic Games of Strategy"...
Well, I've finally got enough implemented that I think I have something worth showing, so here it is:
http://kolis.dyndns.org/eggs
There's not really much in terms of an actual strategy game engine, seeing as I haven't implemented "coordinate systems" or "players"
But I do have a way to represent "abilities" of "entities" in a way that is much more flexible from a programmer's perspective than SE5's ability system!
Take a look, download the source code (C# 3.0), heck, give the test GUI a whirl and see if you can find any bugs
(Yes, I know the "add component" and "add content" buttons don't work, as well as all the "remove" buttons - I just got tired of working on it for the night
You can still add abilities and set archetypes, though - remember, abilities are inherited by an entity from its archetype; it's basically a generalization of a ship inheriting abilities from its design, or a design inheriting abilities from its hull!)