One idea I got in mind:
an Elite-like scenario, planets, stations and ships, and buy-low sell-high trading. The player is like a trade fleet commander, sitting on some station and sending out his ships. Since there is no communication possible after a ship undocked and got into hyperspace, it has to be provided with instructions about how to trade the freight, how to react on certain events like pirates, under what circumstances by new freight, and return home after how many jumps/trade/time.
Another idea, though still based on robots, is the concept of the board game robo-rally.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RoboRallyhttp://images.funagain.com/back/huge/15178.jpg