Timeline

In order to make the game interesting, beta users should be the first wave of explorers to leave the homeworld (Earth). They will, by necessity, be explorers rather than warriors or merchants. These early users will be assigned at least one initial world to explore. These initial worlds will have been pre-screened as most likely to support colonization.

The first couple of worlds to be colonized should face a greater-than-random chance of total failure. This should represent the evolving nature of the technology: the more it gets used, the better it gets. The first couple of colonized planets may live in infamy as terrible failures. Or they may beat the odds and be resounding successes.

Colonization in general will take some number of cycles to complete. There may be terraforming issues, or local intelligences with which to negotiate, or other challenges to overcome. Once a colony is successfully established, routine transportation routes can commence. Initially, these routes will be between the homeworld and the just-colonized planet. After some number of cycles, freight may move between nearby colonies.

The next wave of game players should then have the option to pilot whatever kind of vessel they prefer. After some period of real-world time expires, new players should be natives of the different colonies rather than homeworlders. This will allow for interesting inter-player and inter-colony dynamics.

-- History The game, obviously, takes place in the future. Whether it's the near future, or the distant future is yet to be determined. There should be some solid grounding in real history, as well as a consistent "future history". For example, ships should be named after famous astronauts. Some of those names will be names with which players are familiar (Aldrin, Armstrong, etc); but some should be named after astronauts that made history in the period between the players' real world and the game's timeline. These famous figures should have reasonably developed biographies available for research by players through their ship computers.

There should definitely be mention of SpaceX, Jeff Bezo's Blue Origin, and similar contemporary commercial space operations. These may be major non-governmental actors in the game world, even.