The following is what I can remember of a space-strategy game. I do not remember the title, and I figure cool people like you would be able to figure out the title.
As I just mentioned, it is a space strategy game. I can barely remember this game as it was over 10 years ago when I last played.
-If I remember correctly, it has a map of stars not unlike Master Of Orion.
-You build ships and missiles. The game refers to missiles as SSM's.
-You may build ships of varying sizes, I believe. Don't remember if you can customize them aside from research.
-You research technologies. As you gain tech levels, the ships will have different colors. For example, through the game you'll have silver/white ships, and then upgrade them to eventually be gold ships (I remember there being a bunch of tech levels and colors).
-The planet/colony management is rather hazy in my memory. I don't remember any details (and I don't want to get it confused with MOO).
-you may intercept fleets in mid-space before they reach your star system.
-I am not certain how battles work in this game work. I think size of the ships and tech was important, but aside from that I am not sure.
I have looked through abandonia's listing, and googled for around 2 hours. Maybe this game wasn't distributed widely; maybe I'm just not thinking of the right keywords. The listings I have looked through have little mention of this game, but of course it helps to know the title
To be explicit, I am NOT talking about Master of Orion. I would be inclined to say this game was released before MOO, but that is not certain.
I know this isn't much to go on, but I am reasonably certain that if you have played this game, it would ring a bell.