Is this a Sim of a Space Emperors day-to-day? Will it be like looking into a palace(?) à la The Sims where you make suggestions of steps throughout the game, or is it a third-person where you control him, or is it akin to a text adventure?

Is the intent to build some kind of "random event generator"?

If so, I believe you'd find more "richness" in taking a step back.

Building upon economic conflict can lead to various outcomes.

For example:

Resource A is scarce. As an Emperor, you just can't quite order people to find this resource and mine it and distribute it. You sort of have to rely on the "private sector". So, much like in Dune, you can select a few companies to which you grant the right to exploit this resource by promising the monopoly to whoever comes on top.

Since this is the private sector, you only have remote control on the outcome, which could lead to either of these:

- One of the companies comes on top, and you must honor your bargain, but it ends up costing you more than you had anticipated, which, from an economic standpoint, makes this situation undesirable (how to solve this?). That corporation might even become so powerful that it might try to turn the empire into a democracy or else, which you, as the Emperor, can't allow. Depending on how you deal with them and the people, you might end up in open rebellion, or a politic strife.

- Conflicts erupt between the companies (they are basically like provinces you don't really control, but their skirmishes impact the rest of your empire negatively, so you need to take action).

- Companies become uninterested in the venture because the "reward" does not outweight the costs they must face. Since this resource is critical, how do you manage to convince them to pursue this?

Introducing the "private sector" could really open up solutions, and having the player face conflicts which have evolving states (lack of resources --­> strife --> company rebellion --> popular rebellion, etc.) can make the "random events" much more compelling to face.

You can exchange private sector with trusted advisors, generals, or the likes, so long as they are external entities that could potentially have their own agenda.

I should be charging you milk money for all my random crazy ideas :P

Calamity 1: A great and terrible space worm has hatched....unfortunately the egg in which it was gestating had been colonised as a planet and now not only have you lost loyal citizens but you have a whacking great space monster smack dab in the middle of your shipping lanes.

Calamity 2: Your only son and heir (insert daughter for the people who argue sexism) has managed be photographed naked playing strip poker in an hotel at a notorious town of vice (this is of course a completely original idea and not at all based on real life events).

Calamity 3: Your long lost uncle has returned claiming that he was the older brother and not his twin and thus rightfully emperor.

Calamity 4: Your wife is 6 months pregnant but you only met and married her 4 months ago

Calamity 5: You learn that your youngest and only living son was the one behind the death's of his two older brothers in order to become the heir.

Calamity 6: The public has learnt that you sent the royal dog off to the firing squad after he pee'd in your slippers, outrage abounds.

actually I have more serious suggestions inline with your post but RL has popped up and I will have to return to edit those suggestions back in.

Your galaxy is about to collide with its nearest neighbor, and you have to prepare. Of course, this happens over the course of millions of years, so you either have to be immortal or you do the Civilization thing of having the leader represent a whole dynasty.

Also, if you're going to portray it realistically, very few systems will be directly affected (eg from star collisions), but you'll have to deal with a bunch of new stars (and maybe some alien species). In addition, the alignments of stars will be changing, which could play havoc with interstellar trade (though that also happens over millions of years, or at least thousands).

It sounds to me that your game is more like a Sim City/Tropico 4 type of thing only you controll the emperor. Interesting.

You could go the King Lear route and have the Emperor cought between three daughters, one who loves him amazingly but that he has shunned, and two who are just waiting for their partner in crime (a close lord) to take out the emperor.

You could go the King Aurthor way where the Emperor has made love to his wicked half sister (unknowingly) and has a son who comes back to kill him (Those are the woes of inbreeding).

Here's another classic one. The emperor was a malformed child and was left on a mountain, or whatever, to die. He lives and ends up killing his father. He has to save the kingdom from a monster though, and the prize is the queen's hand in marriage. The emperor completes the task. Only later (after four kids) does he realized he's killed his father and married his mother...Oedipal complex anyone?

None of those ideas are really original, but they are good ideas that you can make original. Good ideas though. I would use them, lol. May have some original ideas later, but now stuck in school mode, so you'll have to forgive my need to share literature...Lol :P