That probably is already in progress...
So, I was half asleep last night, and for some strange reason my thoughts drifted across to EV: Nova plug-ins,
An idea came to me, and i sat up in a flurry of thought, before realising that I'm a lazy bugger and probably would do nothing with it, and someone had probably already thought of it.
However, I'll post it here, in case I do decide to do it, I can prove that I did (or didn't) have the idea first.
So you start with your huge universe, blah de blah, two sides fighting eachother, yadda yadda, but with the whole idea of gaining and losing systems. I.e. space battles. So you start as a simple cadet, and you may be patrolling systems, when you suddenly recieve an emergency message saying that battle has been joined here or here, offensive ones could be planned, defensive ones could be sudden. If you don't get there in time, the conclusion is determined randomly, if you do, it's decided... uh.. differently
You go up ranks for being successfully in battles, stations can be destroyed, planets bombed, allies gained and lost, battles controlled by somewhat random crons. If you are a high enough rank, you get wingmen, or are able to decide the location of offensive battles, and (mission bits and missions allowing) outfits come and go if certain worlds are taken over, etc...
What do people think? Has anyone already come up with this, or for that matter, is it already in progress? If not, I may have a crack at it if I can work out a way to do it on my PC (I have Nova, but it's registered for my Mac, which I spend very little time on these days)