Ok bare with me on this as its all just coming to mind.

I'm sure there are others who have enjoyed Freelancer as much as I have, but I'm curious if there would be any interest for a sort of 'Freelancer RTS' mod that would mimic the gameplay from that game but in rts format.

For instance, the map in the game that had all the planets in the universe could easily be made into one giant map for Solar Empire. missions (trade/combat) could be done by getting near a planet or space station and a modded menu window pops up that offers simple missions. When you 'activate' a mission, it creates the enemy(s) at a certain location for you to complete.

Essentially you load up the freelancer 'universe' map and begin with a small scout ship and travel the star systems doing missions to gain 'xp' and money (resources?) to buy a bigger ship. Someone would have to create an 'xp' bar and the mission windows, but unless it sounds too far fetched, I think this type of mod could work based on the freedom we should have with the mod tools.

You can even go so far as to have servers host 'persistent' freelancer universe maps that you can continue at a later time. How this could all be done I don't know, I'm not the mod type heh. But I would kill to be able to play something similar to Freelancer but from a top down perspective.