So, you know the grand strategy 4x thing, explore, expand, exploit, exterminate. Kinda problematic. But I love them as a genre, and I love systems programming, sooo... been up to a little something something in my spare time. Look out for something in a few years! I have a schedule and I'm mostly sticking to it!

Wanted to run the premise and broad design brushstrokes by people for the good old ruthless critique.

Premise: Space setting, only humans, a bunch of terraforming ships got sent out after capitalists threw a tantrum at losing control of most of earth(okay, the mobs may have also been at their door, sent out colony ships and launched the nukes, earth cleanup efforts may or may not work out so the survivors are hedging their bets by sending out terraformers.

Terraforming ships get where they're going at a relatively slow pace, by the time they've gotten settled in, dysfunctional but much more powerful capitalist states form an encirclement around earth who they're still fighting on and off. Some of the other terraforming ships that flew only a relatively short distance away are now their vassals.

Throughout the game these powers try to establish an exploitative relationship with the player society and other societies, following the 4x paradigm (basically how players discover and interact with city states in civ6 but with much less whitewashing)

Players interact with other periphery countries in a more collaborative than expansionist way, although forming federations with various levels of centralization would be an option with very friendly countries, and countries that have been puppet dictatorshipped can be annexed(or left autonomous, and which decision the player makes will impact how they're viewed diplomatically)

Basic premise setting done, the core mechanics will be played with:

Explore: it is a two way street. If you know about someone, they probably now know about you. New planets to inhabit are terraformed, the rare planets with already existing ecosystems are much more valuable for scientific research. (And must be protected from the capitalists and there shortsighted profit motive) Part of the game will be limiting intel on your society by killing or capturing explorers in the early game, setting trade protocol and enforcing borders against spy attempts in the middle and late, some late game stuff I haven't figured out yet

Expand: there is a lot of space that can just be used more efficiently. Building tall is always an option, viable wide playstyles are mainly "we've adapted our society to live in desolate places that are too expensive for the capitalist bastards to dig us out of"

Exploit: all the resources that are extracted are either organic and recycle themselves once consumed with proper ecological management, or non-organic and need to be recycled. No infinite mining. Build options for "we can be a little irresponsible in the short term as we transition to a more sustainable system" and "we should do this the right way from the start" with the former being a little min-max-y but with a serious danger of being trapped in a destructive cycle that punishes the player.

Exterminate: capitalist powers are genocidal, to varying extents that suite their goals. No player options for being evil for the lulz, the worst you do is pack up colonists from the imperial core and send them home

I have more thoughts but I feel like I've rambled enough tonight (I had like, literally something with only a trace of alcohol but I have absolutely no tolerance)

Please let me know what you think, I'd really like to make a grand strategy game with explicitly communist themes, and I know the genre is kind of inherently unsuited for it but I'm trying to make it as least muddled as possible.