Shame on me I haven't read the hole thread. So if anything was answered before ignore this.

Just some questions and ideas:

Why is it a browser based game? I don't like these browser games. It's like filling out excel sheets and the only reward you can get is filling more and more excel sheets.

What about a native client with a real 3D or 2.5D gameplay. You could use pygame for this. It's very easy to use. Or choose a C++ based game engine but that will be harder.
I voted for space mmo. N9/N950 users already have something similar with gof2 which is an awesome game. Maybe we could adapt some ideas of that game to build a real mmorpg game with actual gameplay (controling a character/ship that moves on the screen).

So please don't make another excel sheet game. That's no mmo.