Detjen not to jump in on your action just to offer a perspective how I could see it working.
From the point of view of a one empire environment. First you would need to know how many people would like to sign up, before you really can see if a game type would work.
I can't see people running certain military commands working, as it would be very slow in progressing the game.
I suggest you can running different functions like ministries.
President - Assigns Research, Alien Diplomacy and assign ministries to players overall tasks but not directly (e.g. We need more sorium, we will attack this race) The role is voted on by all players ever 5 years the President also then assigns ministries. A person declares themselves running for president.
Ministries
Production/Ship Building Minister - The role decides the priority of the various colony and shipyard productions
Design Minister - Designs all Ship classes and Components ready for research
Defence Minister - The allocation of military assets into the various systems as well as military goals (Actual fleet and ship function role played by the Computer Operator,GM, whatever you like to call it)
Survey Minister - Allocation of Survey Vessels and Survey Teams
Support Minister - Allocation of Commerical Vessels and civilian fleet tasks, for transport duties
Optional HR Minister - Allocation of Medals and Personnel to the various assigned tasks
Optional Planetary Defence Minister - Allocation of ground Troops and PDC and ODP units, space mines.
Optional Mining Minister - Allocation of mining assets and sorium harvesters
Optional Sector Production/Ship Building Minister - If there are a lot of people wanting to be involed then you can add sectors or colony ministers each colony
Ministers will need to work with other ministers, in getting the relevant resources and probably need to make decisions that will put one other ministers over another's which will create politics, which ultimately then will decide on who would be president.
The president, can not directly interfere with the ministries duties, but can assign strategic goals and allocate research goals.
I think with this system you will have politics, friction of people working together and a great story line of information, also it allows people to be mixed up occasionally with the introductions of a new president and new cabinet.
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From a Gm point of view, you roleplay all the minor players, star captains, fleet commanders, planetary governors and provide detail around the events
Optional Provide detail direct to each of the ministries and on a quarterly basis the ministries give there report to the rest of the players. This creates a litte bit of fog for the game.
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For some extra spice you can create events, which can affect the race (by using play race you can modify some attributes), these could be in the way of forming the rules of a government and laws, you could start of with a small amount of laws about the ministry and president and using a sandbox to vote on responsibilities, Such like to laws are you go along like a real government.
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I think you would need to request a forum from Erik and then a subfolder for each ministry, this will allow easy of management of the data. Perhaps on the main folder you can add posts about different events that affect all ministries.