I have finally thought of a name for my Project: Spiritus Astrum. It means "Spirit of the Stars" in Latin. I think that says what I want to say about this project.
I remember playing "Imperium Galactica 2, and I really liked that name. I thought it suited the style, and the scope of it (The game allowed you to play in space, and zoom down to a planetary level, which was uncommon at the time, and in fact, still is).
I wanted to capture the same essence with my game, but to emphasise the almost philosophical vision I have for it.

Spiritus Astrum will be a free MMO game set in the future. It will feature a tactical combat system similiar in many ways to the old X-Com games, where players will command small squads, in real time, against either AI or Human opponents.

I am very interested in the idea of the player as an adventurer, seeking their fortune among the stars. I don't want to over-promote conquest, or any one aspect of the game, I want the player to choose their own path. This is why I have chosen to adopt a classless system, where the player can acquire skils in certain "roles", depending on what actions they perform, but they can specialise, generalise, or change roles at will. For example, a player who spends a lot of time flying a starship, will, naturally, have a high skill level in the "pilot" role, but there is nothing stopping them from deciding to spend some time trading, and developing skills in that area too. Roles will be completly interdependent, and equally important, so fighters, for example, will not have an advantage over players who choose not to fight.

The game takes place in a large universe, comprised of diverse star systems and planets. Players can conquer, explore, trade, form guilds, or become politicians, or just relax, and meet some new people.
The game will feature a well-developed social network, and character customisation system, where players can create a character and interact with others in the world.

Players of sufficient experience and reknown in the world will also be able to rent, buy, or even construct building, or upload custom textures and 3d models to the server. In fact, it will even be possible, (although very expensive) to terraform a planet, customising weather, landscape, sky, and even vegetation!

This is really a players game, it will be built from the ground up to feature user-generated content. This is as much out of neccessity as it is for any other reason, I dont have the resources to develop all the required art assets single-handedly, but if the community helps, everybody gets something out of it.

Everything is at a very early stage right now, but I have mostly finished the basic design, and am working on an early protype of what I am calling the "Social Networking" section of the game.
I will try to update this blog with regular progress reports.