[Ide]

I like the terraforming idea. This reminds me of a thread on another forum (WORA). The concept of the mud could be a colony ship that (crash?) landed on an alien world, and the players are responsible for the survival of the colony, so it would involve some cooperation, a la Tale in the Desert, or that mud Dark Voyage that part of the team from the old Inquisition mud was working on. Maybe when it crashed it scattered some essential parts of the ship over the surface, so that gives you some incentive for exploration. Essential tech would be locked into these parts of the ship, and players would have to bring that back to the colony to expand and survive.

As the mud gets bigger you could open new worlds with different ecologies...maybe set it up like some MMOs where the whole playerbase works together to unlock a gate (i.e., construct a new tech), such as repairing a ship that would allow them to land on a moon and set up a base there.

Players could design new technologies, kind of like crafting swords and what not but more interesting .

You could have hostile native life, maybe let some players that win extra rewards switch into those mobs for some PvP fun, kind of like the LoTR MMO and some other muds have done.

The ship AI could be kind of a meta-NPC in the game, directing traffic so to speak, and ramping up the dramatic tension when appropriate.

Lots of potential.