Hey RipClaw. Well, the races and melees are meant to be played online or with friends. Regarding the future of OpenClonk, I like to say that it very much depends on the actual contributions of people who are interested to make OpenClonk into something. But the truth is, that we are already discussing about, designing and already implementing the "Making buildings, mining for gold, researching, etc." part of the game. Since we are currently reinventing Clonk in that matter, we  take our time to properly build the basics, you know?
Just take a look around in the forum, you are invited to contribute to the discussions or bring in new ideas :-)