To Arbiter, what language are you coding the game in and what engine?
As I mentioned, I am still entertaining the idea and will need to think this through over the weekend. If I decide to give it a go and do some prototyping, it will be implemented in C++ with open source components (e.g. BGFX for rendering, Flatbuffers for serialization, ZeroMQ for connectivity). Game logic would probably be implemented in a scripting language to allow a high degree of modability (game logic + UI code could be open-sourced, C++ engine would remain proprietary).
I would rather assemble an engine from various open source components than use a complete off the shelf engine due to pricing (most engines offer free plans, but you need to pay a lot to gain access to all features and source code), flexibility (I have some ideas for features that are not implemented in publicly available engines), (un)suitability of engines for strategy games and a questionable quality of some of those engines (I am looking at you, Unity).
3D done right can actually be cheaper than 2D, for example you can implement nice effects with a few lines of code instead of pre-rendering hundreds of frames. Sci-fi setting does not require complex graphical assets, starships or planets can rendered as static meshes without any animations.
I have experience with 3D programming, not games though. A lot of experience with network programming in various languages, including C++.
I can code a bit of Racket and a bit of Python. Would love to help with scripting.