I must say Sins of a Solar Empire has allot of potential, and i hope it will improve as much as galactic civilisations II did from the 1.00 verson to the current version.
I just finished playing a multiplayer (LAN) game and a single player game, and came acros a few things that i think need improvement, this game lacks depth a bit.

* The 3 races are pretty much alike, there are differences but like the capital ships are nearly the same. There could be some new options implented to each new races (happy to think something up, but i'm not a developer).

* Diplomacy atm is not fun at all, i'd prefer to have the diplomacy like galciv II has. Its far better than this. They control me, i dont have ANY control over them. Those missions are no fun at all, the galciv II diplomacy is far better and should be implented into sins as well, it'll improve the game allot.

* Bounty's. I should be able to collect those bounties as well. Imaging having the galciv II diplomacy system + the ability to put a bounty on another players head. Any player could just declare war on him and collect a certain ammount of money for each ship that was destroyed or building that was razed.

* Minor races, like in galciv II (i dont have much games to compare this one with huh ) could be added into sins as well. Kinda like the pirates, but another challenge and less aggresive like the pirates. You should be able to ally them as well and help them out or they help you out.

* Even though the galciv II diplomacy might not be added into sins, I do think stuff needs to change. I want to be able to ally people and they actually help me out, they actually send ships if we are allied. Maybe have some sort of point system that if you helped them out they remember it and help you out. I dont know in how far that is possible but i'm sure stardock/ironclad are able to do it.

* Techtree. What i would like to see, are endless techs. So a tech that each point you put in there increases the output of a metalextractor with 5%, but every point gets more and more expensive. Same goes for damage of missiles, ranges etc etc. This would require a overhaul of the current system.
Maybe just do it with 1 of the races. that 1 has my idea, and the others have the current techtree, and make it so that the techtree that is limited is also cheaper, so they have to act fast because if enough resourches and wait to long, the unlimited tech tree will be stronger after a certain point.
Right now i feel the techtree is to short.

* Ships: Maybe a bigger differents between small ships. medium ships and big ships.
I builded pretty much 1 type of ships and thats it.
You can do so much with this, like people suggested that you can create your own.
But also make more ships, really small, small, medium, large and extra large.
The cost differents has to be extreme, like you can buy 50.000 really small ships or just 1 extra large ship.
Its doable with the current logistic system and you can add research to the tree for it.

There are sooo many things that could be added/changed/implanted into this game to make it even better. And i mean that in a positive way, the game really has allot of potential and even i could work allot of things out for the game.
Some of my ideas i described above, hopefully the devs agree with me and will add it into one of the patches.
If there are any questions, i'm around on irc

mystic