Looking for a Space Economic Sim

Let me preface this by the fact that I'm looking for a game that very well may not exist.

Essentially, I'm looking for an open ended space sim where economy is the main focus. Preferably menu driven. The game X2: The Threat is very, very close to what I'm looking for in terms of economy, but graphically is more than what I want. Also it seems a bit micromanaged. At any rate it's a very long time in that game before you can put your foot in the door with the large scale economy.

I just have an itch for a game with these mechanics that hasn't been scratched. The features I'm looking for:

* A large amount of highly customizable ships
* Factories which produce ship components
* An economy based on resource acquisition and trade, which is dynamic according to supply and demand

The X universe games seem to supply much of this, but I think the execution is clumsy. Anyone else know of a similar game that might do what I'm talking about? And if you have no idea what I'm talking about/don't care/don't think this shit exists, just tell me to STFU, it's fine.

Perhaps you need to go back to the classics: Elite.

Tried Elite, it doesn't do much for me sadly.

Edit: Tried Oolite too, I should add, and it didn't work on my system. Go figure.

Well. It's MMO and has twitch gameplay, it's old and has a small playerbase, but Jumpgate has those. Sequel coming out next year though.

EVE Online.

I'd like to try Eve online at some point, but I don't really have a good enough computer to run it at the moment. One'a these days...

Masters of Orion? I only saw a little of it a long time ago, so I don't remember what the gameplay is like.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Empires_IV ?

I'm trying to move away from the MOO, Galciv, Space empires kind of game, those mostly play like Civilization, which I play way too much. Going more for the economic side of things.

Star Control II?

Not sure if that fits the bill, but it was one recommended to me a while back.

Sins of a solar empire would be worth a look. It's a little more like age of empires in space, but you can kinda ignore the military aspect as long as you play maps with allies and keep a reasonable force. I haven't played it in a while now but it was kinda cool, and looking over the first page of the site it looks like there's a new expansion (I hadn't even heard there was a first -.-).

Play Sim Tower and pretend you're on the moon.

Better yet, there's a Moon tileset for the original SimCity!

Man, Simtower is screwy though. All of the buildings and hotels become useless far too quickly. Yoot Tower is the same way, too. I love that game though.

There's an old and fairly obscure SSI game called Stellar Crusade you might like to investigate. It has fully customisable ships plus the economy and ship production are resource based, the downside (for some people) is that it's turn-based.

Ahaha, oh wow. I got all pumped up for Stellar Crusade, got it installed, and raring to go... and then realized my computer doesn't have a numberpad. Damn laptops. Thanks for the tip anyways though, sounds like it could be cool. I really love turn based games, they're actually a turn ON for me. Though I'm looking more for a Corporation building game than a military empire building game.

X2 is kind of holding my interest, I really like the way the economy is done but part of me hates having to wait realtime. It would be better if whenever the window loses focus the game would keep running, so I could just automate my profits while doing something else. I also don't have a graphics card in this shitty laptop so flying into a system is like trying to swim through thick and creamy salad dressing. Forget combat.

Edit: Also the fun thing about X2 is you can set your billboards that show up on your space station. Mine is the iconic picture of Girg Jatsand:

Mr. Freeze said:

EVE Online.

This. It's a MMO for business geeks. IN SPACE.

Still, getting my battlecruiser was pretty sweet. Until combat happened. Sweet, sweet, drawn-out realistically boring space combat.

Yeah, it really sounds like Eve Online is exactly what you're looking for.

I can run it with my 5-year old computer with only on board video and 1 GB of RAM fairly well. The graphic requirements aren't too steep.