I've come up with an idea for a game I think is cool. I may be biased, so I'll let you judge for yourself. It's a futuristic space RPG. You start out in a solar system that has just been ravaged by a gigantic space battle. Ruined hulks of ships, as well as survivors, are drifting around the system. First you have to repair your ship, then you need to build an interstellar drive to escape the system because periodically the two warring nations fighting for the system will fight more battles, and eventually you will end up dead if you don't leave. However, you can also salvage things from the ruined spacecraft and make friends among the other survivors, allowing you to eventually build up a small armada of upgraded ships. Not only do you gain experience, so do your crew members and officers, meaning you'll have to manage the people in your fleet to best use they're skills. The point is to become strong enough to keep the warring nations out of your system, although you'll have to go to other systems to build up because the first system doesn't have much advanced equipment. It may have been done before, I'm not sure. It came to me while playing the first mission of Knights of the Old Republic II: Sith Lords. I'm debating with myself whether it should be 2d or 3d, but I'll probably choose 3d. The only problem with this is that I'll have to learn 3d, but since I've already started to do that the only problem is the time it will take. Any advice or comments would be apprecciated.

So essentially you're building a nation and army up from survivors, while rebuilding your civilization and alliances from nearby systems? Interesting idea for an RPG.

Would it be from the perspective of an officer or the leader of the system?

That sounds like a good idea for a game, but it sounds like a big project. I suggest you decide what is most interesting to you -- the art, story, game design, music, or programming -- and focus just on that and not worry about the rest for a while. Or perhaps reduce the scope of the project.

The player was a member of the system's military, but when they tried to keep the two other nations out they got crushed, along with the two fleets. Now the player is trying to survive and save his world. I guess its kind of an RPG/RTS, but the player will only have direct control of a few people near his character, and the rest will be doing their jobs pretty much independantly, depending on whether they're and engineer or a nurse or a security guard, all of which are jobs the player assigns, and they'll gain experience in that area and get better at it.

Of course this is going to be a long project, two, maybe three years, maybe even more because I'm only one person. I knew that as soon as I had the idea, but I still want to do it.