Don't really give orders but I think this sort of counts.

Star trek starship creator, you can set up a ship, a crew and see how it does on missions.

...Progress Quest i linked earlier is pretty damn good at doing its own thing :)

We burn them over here so you don't have to burn them over there. So said King George Bush II.

Hi, all y'all.
Just learn the lessons from across the pond, and burn the ugly ones.
And mind the wind, will ya?

For a truly passive game, I suggest Progress Quest.

Mmmgnnyyyeah. I do actually have (to my huge shame) cookie clicker running in the background, and I used to spend a lot of time on that lillipop farm thing, and, yeah, had ProgressQuest on for a while. But... I'm asking here because I'm trying to not fall QUITE that low.

(I mean, in terms of brainmelting... Progress Quest is pretty cool by itself and I'm super happy that it exists.) These games are turn-based, which require me to click, which is inacceptable.

Seriously, I love turn-based games, and indeed they allow for relaxed play, but they lack what I currently look for : a fun thing to stare at, as things happen on the screen. So yeah, all the Simstuff series are good exemples (though I'm a bit refractory to The Sims itself), as well as bullfrog management stuff. All real-time management stuff are good exemples of what I look for (GOG please do bring Jurassic Park Operation Genesis, it's the coolest), and some tower defense games are too (though the best ones force you to be quite active onscreen in order to progress).

Heck, Evil Genius can be a good exemple. I loved to sit back and just watch my base's activity there. Maybe I should give the Settlers a try, but I remember it had hugely disappointed me on the Amiga.

Are there games outside of that genre, though ? Majestic and Gratuitous Space Battles are exemples of contemplative gameplay that aren't just Tropico/Simcity/Zeus reskin...

I had never heard of ST Starship Creator. This concept totally deserves a gogvote.

http://www.gog.com/wishlist/games/star_trek_starship_creator
http://www.gog.com/wishlist/games/star_trek_starship_creator_warp_ii

Reading in the GOG forum about other people trying to play a game but struggleing with bugs and incompatibilities? Two layers of passive gaming.

Or answering a thread about a guy who wants to do passive game...?! *ahhh crap*

Never mind. I re read your post and saw the part where you said, you don't want to be personally active the whole time.

If you want an experience that allows you to be super lazy then I recommend you play EVE ONLINE. :) It seems that game was built for super lazy people especially if you decide to be a miner. Most of the time, you will just be staring at a screen...watching your ship do what you told it to do...

Open Transport Tycoon Deluxe, you can automate all the annoying tasks and once you have gobbled up all the competition you can comfortably lean back, grab yourself an iced drink and watch your Empire rake in endless amounts of dough.

To be honest, it's not exactly about laziness (and total passivity) itself. But it's about the pleasure to behold some autonomous activity that you've been planning. I like looking at little AI activity, acting independantly with your occasional meddling.

The Creatures series should qualify too, but I unfortunately never managed to really 'grasp' its mechanisms.

Alas that's my problem. I can't imagine the appeal of these games because their theme just don't speak to me. They clearly lack the required dinosaurs.

Now I can't remember precisely your suggestion, before your edit, but I don't recall it being an irrelevant one. What was it ?

Your little guys don't die / towns go to ramshackle hell if you ignore them in these games?

Nexus: The Jupiter Incident is kind of passive. You hit "Pause", you give your orders, you resume the game and watch your ships executing your orders.

Forgot to mention the Anno series, those are all very relaxing (except for 1503 where you actually have to do some work and can't slack off as easily)

Anno 1602 is still a favorite of mine.

The Last Federation and X3: Albion Prelude (with the XRM mod) are passive games in my opinion. And I kinda wish more games need to have an option to run the game on a background, like X3.

It's fun to watch events unfold in both games, especially in The Last Federation.

And as for X3... Just be careful of Xenon / Kha'ak / other hostile factions attacking you unless you are well armed with escorts.