Solar Empire is a
browser based game wherein players mine fuel and minerals which are sold or produced into fighters that are used to
kill other players.
The basic strategy of the game is to accumulate a fleet of mining ships. Using the money generated, purchase a Genesis Device to create a planet. This is important because without a planet, your fleet is largely unprotected and will be destroyed by other players. Once you have a planet, you need to get colonists onto the planet so that you can start producing fighters with the fuel and minerals that you mine.
The tough part is that the game usually runs for about 3 weeks non-stop. If someone breaches your defenses, you can lose everything you have over lunch. You quickly get into the habit of checking in on the game every hour or two. Despite this addictive quality, or maybe because of it, the game is quite easy to learn and a lot of fun to play. Also, there is a tendency for the rich to get richer since when you attack another player, you can rob them of minerals, fuel and colonists.
This game is also an open source project hosted on SourceForge and written in PHP and PERL using MySQL tables to store the data.
The game is run from http://www.solar-haven.net.