I remember this old PC space strategy game, been trying to find the name of it. It had you pick one of I think.. 10 alien races.. give or take, [No this is NOT master of Orion, though I feel it played very similarly] Where you were placed in a galaxy of star systems, one of the races could speak to all the other races for diplomacy, another could see all the home locations, another, hated everyone! All had other various powers. I remember the race that had "Speak to Everyone Before meeting them" ability had like a Smile on some of their higher class ships.
Another thing I remember is the star system was a rotateable 3D map, You could Pause Time, or make it go faster. Each Home planet would be identified by a Flag of the race icon, it looked like a => box only pointing straight down..
Each planet had like 10 spaces for Orbital bases, missiles, shield generators, and ships, the same on the planet surfaces. .. I think?
The Galaxy map and the Star system map were both rotateable, And the only way to move a ship from one system to the next was through warp holes at various edges of the star map. You could also only move one ship at a time.

Space Empires?

Not quite, Atleast, I don't think so. You could not customize the races.
Another thing I remember is the star system was a rotateable 3D map, You could Pause Time, or make it go faster. Each Home planet would be identified by a Flag of the race icon, it looked like a => box only pointing straight down..
Edit: Oh! I just remembered, each planet had like 10 spaces for Orbital bases, missiles, shield generators, and ships, the same on the planet surfaces. .. I think?

Do you have any idea who might have developed that game? Or who was the publisher?

Unfortunately no.. I was like.. 10 at the time.
Edit: OP updated.

No problem. Glad I could help. One of the games I never quite figured out how to play properly and got crushed early each time. Probably still got the game buried somewhere...