I remember playing a game when I was a kid that I'd love to find again.
It was a 3rd person space strategy game. It had different sizes and styles of ships, all the way up to a really big circle-looking thing that was a big base defense station. While empire building was done turn-based, Battles were fought in a different screen that was real-time, or turn-based real time. I seem to recall that the dominant weapon was lasers, and it showed the line of the laser as it fired from one ship to another. I seem to remember the dominant color of the battles being pinkish, or fuchsia, although I'm pretty sure it was post-CGA graphics era.
It seems like different planets had different atmosphere types and you had to build a colony ship that matched that planet type.
I also remember that you could set time to pass, and as it did, the game played arpeggio-like music as time passed. (But this little detail might have been a different game, lol).
Any ideas? It seems like it was around 90-97?
I looked at the Space Empires series, but I don't think it was any of those.