Here's something I've been working on...You set up a map of the galaxy with 20 planets, and the trade routes between them. Players take turns moving between the planets with their ship via the routes. Whenever they do so, the route they've taken has two colored cubes placed on it (if it didn't have cubes already) representing the types of trade that go on on that route. There are say four colors total. When both players have made a certain number of moves, they score points based on the trade routes they are on. So Player One would choose a color, say Blue, and then see how long the longest chain of blue trade routes that he is touching is, and get points based on that. Same with the other player. A twist is that instead of moving to a new planet when it's your turn, you can exchange cubes between to route that are touching your planet. This would let you set up longer chains, and also disrupt lanes your opponents might be setting up.
Since every route would have two colors, there would be shifting, tricky patterns the route network that you would have to pay close attention to. Switching cubes between two routes could set up an unintentional chain for your opponent.
After scoring points they would have another round of moving and switching, and then score points again. The Galaxy would gradually fill in, and then the players would have to make do with the setup as it is, slowly modifying it as they could. When players reached certain point benchmarks, the would get more ships, slowly adding to the strategic complexity.
Any ideas?
That's a good point. I should make sure that it doesn't follow Ingenious too closely. I'll have to take a look at that game again, but I think they're pretty distinct.
I was thinking of implementing cards or something similar with objectives on them that would influence how the players moved. Right now how it works is that you get a new ship when you have scored 5 points in every color (you keep track of how many points of each color you have scored), which forces people to diversify their strategy, and also lets other players predict what they're going to do next.
However, this IS a lot like ingenious (I hadn't noticed that before), so I might implement the card-objectives to make the game a bit let abstract and more diverse and themed. Also, I'm not using a hex setup. The set up is such that each planet represents the vertex of a D12 and the routes are the edges, but flattened out onto a 2D plane. It ends up simulating movement around a sphere instead of a plane, which I think is much more interesting, and appropriate for a space game.