OK, so Captain Kwok's got Space Food Empires, and Spoon has Fantasy Empires, so why can't I do a total conversion mod of SE4 too, huh? Maybe if I have an original* idea, I'd be more motivated to finish the mod?
What I have right now is just some bare-bones ideas:
-Galaxy = a computer's filesystem
-Systems = directories (the SystemNames.txt would contain stuff like "C:\", "Windows", "System", "McAfee", "Program Files", etc. (or maybe "/", "var", "usr", "gimp", etc. for the open source systems
)
-Planets = files (Text planets are the best!
) They could be represented with various program icons with comical descriptions relevant to the specific program
-Warp points = shortcuts / symlinks
-Stars = FAT entries / inodes (nuke the star = erase the FAT entry
)
-Minerals = text
-Organics = CPU time (think GritEcon "workers" or MOO3/GalCiv "money", used to make the other resources "useful")
-Radioactives = binary data
-Ships = programs
-Empires = hackers / programmers (with "White Hat" and "Black Hat" racial traits - what about Grey Hat and Red Hat though?
)
-Storms/nebulas = viruses (White Hat hackers could get storm destroying components while Black Hat hackers could get storm creating components)
-Spaceyards = constructors / initializers
-Repair bays = Cyclic Redundancy Checks (White Hat only)
-Fighters = subprocesses
-Troops = file loaders
-Mines/Satellites = spyware (Black Hat only)
-Weapons = destructors / deinitializers
...etc...
*well not really, I kinda was inspired by "Operation Inner Space", a shareware game from the mid-1990s