Introduction: Freelance Rocket Knights / Craig Bradley

I'd be remiss if I didn't recommend FFG's Delta V as a fun rocket game that can be had preposterously cheap on eBay, which may inspire you with its memory game mechanics. Likewise, Wizkids' Rocketmen: Axis of Evil, which can be had so cheaply that I think I made a profit buying it.

Anyways, since you are playing on a grid, have exploration tiles placed face-down on the board. Flip them over to reveal resources, objectives, repair bays, etc. Of course, this costs one or more actions, which may put you at a combat disadvantage. You'd essentially be fighting it out in unexplored territory, revealing the battlefield as you go along. Maybe you need to amass X quantity of Unobtanium to effect a particular repair. Maybe some ships aren't particularly fast or well armed, but they are economical to repair, which ultimately makes them some of the best. For simultaneously, you just have everyone flip tiles at the same time at the end of a turn and make decisions then.

Alternately, dice-based. Everyone throws X dice into a central pool. Players can either use the same results or draw dice results from the pool (ex. I take a 5, not because I need it, but because my opponent really does). A particular repair may cost a 1 result and a 3 result. Upgrades are a form of repair that requires you to be adjacent to some wreckage or other resource that lets you cannibalize components.

And dammit, you got me on the Monopoly/Risk hybrid gag . . . worse still, I want to play it.

Instead of houses and hotels, you place barracks and strongholds. Troops are spawned every time your general lands in a space that you have conquered. You can leave them there or add them to your general's army. The opposing player must fight the armies occupying a space every time that their general lands in a hostile space. If you defeat the armies then you can conquer the space, but you must still make an investment in the region's infrastructure to do so, just as you do with an unoccupied space. Funny thing is, there's Talisman, which is an RPG of Monopoly, but I don't think I've ever seen a wargame-style Monopoly.

Riskopoly!