I first wanted to build Empire years ago, while tinkering on my humble ZX spectrum. Later, I implemented a version of it on the Atari ST. This was a rough draft of a Star Trek game.

Here is a screenshot from that game. The wonders of emulation :)

This had NPC agents with (limited) goal seeking behaviour. Federation, Romulan, Klingon and Ferengi ships were all flying about in a reasonably large Universe that you could explore. This was one of my many experiments in game making. I'm hardly a sophisticated programmer but it passed the time in my youth :)

I made many games on the ST. I had an idea to make my own universe and make it quite diverse. i thought of modular designs for ships and probes, and procedural content. This seemed the best way to go as I can't make all the content for a large galaxy in a reasonable amount of time and keep it interesting.

So here I am, wanting to make a similar game. In the days of the internet, making it a multiplayer online experience seems the logical extension. This also brings with it all the benefits of online play - chatting, alliances, cooperative play etc. I'm never going to make the next Quake, but that's not the goal here. The goal is to make something simple to play, and varied enough to keep you interested.