I'm going to expand on Riptide572's idea of megaships. WWW Link

I've been thinking of this actually almost since I first started to play. However, I'm unsure of exactly how close he is to my idea. Here is mine.

I've heard of few people talking about how they would like factions to be more unique than just a color and an emblem. And I've been thinking that most RTS games have some superweapon, or superunit, or hero unit, or whatever that kicks everything's ass. Well, why not here too? Why not make it unique (per game).

What the player would do, is they would pay a massive sum of money to someone (for the Vasari, it would maybe be a grand council or something, the Advent would have psychics, and the TEC would hire private contractors) to design a megaship. The computer would then choose from say 10-15 premade designs (maybe that is a bit over ambitious), at least one carrier, one battleship, and one support (not sure how you could make a mega support ship but...) would be in there for a full range of options.

The player would then choose the design they wanted, and their homeplanet would begin construction, which would take a long time. This could be done at any point in the game, however stats would be completely fixed. Further techs would have no effect on this megaship. This would be so a player could build a megaship early in the game to get a head start, but the megaship would be outclassed later in the game, vs someone who waits till late game, or till their last hours, to completely flip the balance of power.

The megaship itself would be able to conceivable be able to fight off an entire similarly equipped fleet. Thus it would take either someone with a massive economy, someone who is extremely lucky, or more likely, a concerted allied effort to stop such a ship. Or tech up. Or build one of your own. Of course, they would need unique special abilities, although I wouldn't be asking for a 10-15 possible ones, just 10-15 possible combinations. The need for large cash reserves would prevent one from being made the moment the game starts, allowing players to build up some sizable fleets to counter early bloomers.

Not only would this make games very interesting, would increase the element of strategy (ie when to pull the ace), but would add variation to factions because each faction would eventually have a unique megaship.