- More improvements on planets and new looks for planets.

- Buildable space stations to overwatch certain locations like asteroid belts.

canusamar had some great ones here, I especially agree with the Single player campaign and random events. It would be awesome if phase lanes would shut down during some cosmic event, or if the star you're orbiting would explode in a supernova wiping out the planets around it. Comet strikes, alien explorers bringing you new technologies, the possibilities are endless.

I would like to see a new ship class something between capital ship and Heavy Cruisers. They have lots of armor, health and shields compared to frigates and cruisers but not be total powerful that they can take out everything by theselves.
Here is what I am thinking:
-One would be good vs frigates and support cruisers
-Second would be a large fighter and bomber mobile platform with little firepower
-Third would be a more powerful siege engine than the siege frigate and enough firepower to make last at least a small fight
-Fourth would be good vs. Heavy Cruisers, this new class and capital ships
The advantage would be that you are not limited to how many you can build, they offer a new weapon to your fleet, new strategies would come into play, they add raw power to your fleet and are hard to kill without capital ships.
Disadvantages would be the cost a lot, take time to build, bombers get a bonus attack when attack them, and they take up a lot of fleet space.
I would also want a store and play the race that is chasing the Vasari.

Scaled Planets and ships

Semi or full z-axis function

Maneuvering ships when fighting

Orbiting planets

Black holes- slows down fleet movement or even sucks some ships into itself.

Moar ships and capital ships

Destroyable planets , super novas and Tactical Antimatter weaponry.

Kamikaze

Also a ship full of Anti matter that detonates and destroys A hell lot of ships

Campaign mode
Ship design
More races

Some realism.

I would like to see star systems. When I enter phase space is because I am going to another start system. Think Master of Orion 2 and you will know what I mean. The star systems should be heliocentric with several satellite planets revolving around a star.

An option called AUTO SCOUT. Here is how it works. I click on a ship. Any ship. Then that ship goes out and scouts the galaxy. Then one of three things will happen.

A.) Either the ship is destroyed ( by pirates or the enemy )
B.) The ship scouts everything at which point the ship returns to the home world.
C.) I cancel Auto Scout and return the ship myself.

A) It would be nice to see ships move and turn in combat,
instead of being static while they blast one another to pieces.

I really enjoy the maps they are nice, but in some cases
these large maps can take hours to play and it becomes a little
more difficult to play online.

I suggest create a secondary game mode in a more Total War setup,
give players ship credits, and let them use those credits to make
their fleet, and them let them use strategy to try and destroy another
fleet. Without having to worry about research or colonizing planets.

This will just add another aspect to the game, and hopefully increase
the number of online players.

3) Kind of the Hill game mode, or other ways of winning games.

4)Make cap ships a little more powerful.

'give 1000' buttons for credits, metal and crystal

A multiplayer mode where people can take role as fleet commander/colony administrator:

- they play one team (single economy/research)
- some players concentrate on fleet movements(micro)/ building fleets
- another player concentrates on planetary improvements / colonization / research / resource distribution between fleet commanders

This could possibly be very helpfull on big maps

I would like, during multiplayer battles, the ability to designate targets to my ally. Something like having an option that I could use to click on an enemy ship/platform that would highlight the target on my ally's screen. It would provide an easier and quicker way to coordinate attacks on different targets, especially if I could highlight a few targets at a time.

Next, would it be possible to show the names of a capitol ship on the side of the hull? I know it doesn't affect gameplay, but I think it would be a neat little feature that would make your capitol ships look just a little different from each other.

Also, could the differnt voices of the ships be a little more random? While once again not crucial to gameplay (and even though other strategy games do this as well), it would be nice to have different commanders answer when I click on multiple ships of the same class (especially in the apparently all-male TEC military).

Next, and I know that this has been suggested before and that the developers have mentioned considering/working on it, I would like to know if radio chatter will be added in the expansion. When my bombers attack a target, it would be nice to hear something like "Munitions away!" or "Successful hit on target!" As you may well imagine, having a large fleet of ships and strike craft in a battle all reporting target,weapon, ship, etc status would add a new layer to the game's combat, which is why I saw fit to bring this up again.

Lastly, I have heard of some strategy games (End War and Red Alert 3, I believe) that will have cooperative campaign modes. Might this feature be in the expansion's campaign if it does indeed get one?

Much like Emperor Battle for Dune? they used that in their campain mode.

Hmmm...tempting. I guess I have a lot of ideas in store, but I'm not sure if an expansion is the great plate that these changes would be best served in. I'm more happy if it came as a sequel.

I'll just plop in what's at the top of my head right now. I'm taking into account Sins of a Solar Empire's selling point ("Real-time strategy. Unrivalled scale.") so this list may appear way too ambitious. I'm sorry if it could offend some.

For ships, ship combat, defenses:

1. moving, tracking turrets; players can see which guns are focusing on what target, and what new targets they are acquiring by instant visual recognition; supposed to work well with number 2, I suppose:

- opens up the possibility of implementing batteries (e.g., an entire set of turrets);
- one battery may be subdivided into independently firing guns, i.e, each gun tracks a target of its own, even as enfilade fire; may be reset to unified battery firing depending on ship crew experience and tactics;

2. Capital ships making tactical maneuvers;

- positions themselves so they bring to bear the most firepower upon the their designated priority target;
- provides moving targets and additional depth to epic battles, making the Command Cruiser much more useful when it comes to "added accuracy"; stray fire could count as damage, though I don't know if that's possible even on SoaSE's code currently;
- probably controllable, if possible, by setting the ship's tactics (e.g., defensive, offensive, or support), and its role (e.g., flagship, fleet escort, flagship escort);

3. More experienced capital ship crews efficiently managing fire control:

- As the ship improves in level, the immediate threats of the ship become the priority targets of the gun crew; when ship survivability increases, targets soon revert to the biggest threats in the enemy fleet;
- New tactics are learnt (e.g., broadsides can be coordinated among anti-ship units upon hardpoint targets); makes the research on additional ship crews much more fulfilling;

4. Defense fleet assignments;

- by default fleets can be moved anywhere at the commander's behest, but fleets can be assigned as a "defense fleet" to a certain colony/world;
- if psidar detects incoming hostiles, contingents of the defense fleet of the world under imminent danger will automatically set course for the world they are to protect;
- imagine the feature as a collective distress beacon response protocol;
- upon review of the preceding notion, homeworlds can be assigned a defense fleet, or the option to marshall the empire's entire fleet (no matter where they are) if the threat level of the forces that arrived (note: arrived, not incoming) are beyond the planet's current defense strength (might be great as a military tech/discipline);
- all distresses can be selectively overidden, or a fleet protocol be set so that none of them become effective (added tactical and strategic depth there);

5. Planetary defense systems, and improved planetary resistance;

- most of those systems that are within the planet remain as structures/systems built in the planet, and not tactical objects around the planet;
- limit to how many can be built could probably relate to planetary health/pop, size, owning race; or developmental tech like tactical support capacity, only its named "defense support capacity" or something (help me out here);
- given that the races in SoaSE's universe are technologically advanced, it's highly likely that they will have certain technologies that they can use against orbital bombardment;
- lots of possibilities to play around with here:

+ polar ion/beam/projectile cannons; placed at the extreme poles of a planet providing the best field of fire laterally on their respective hemispheres (near 360 coverage, no matter if the planet rotates too slowly); polar only, so only two can exist; can coordinate fire or engage separate targets;

= ion disables ships only (might damage, but perhaps not so much as a frigate's laser cannon, ala Star Wars) and thus fires fastest;
= projectile provides explosive/impact damage but reloading is cumbersome so fire rate is normal;
= energy weapons could be given a chance to bypass shields and damage the ships directly, but charge times are long due to power requirements; fires the slowest;

+ STO (surface to orbit) missiles/energy/mass driver delivery platforms; basic stuff, probably Ironclad or you guys could be creative with this one;

+ KSATs (killer satellites - i.e., the Star Wars project or think Uprising/Uprising 2 only they're aimed at targets in space);

= easy targets, probably almost bomber fodder, but because they're created to deny the enemy fleet high orbit (thus they are unable to close in with the planet and commence bombardment) they keep the big boys away and allow other more capable defenses (ships, fighters) to mobilize and engage them;

+ PDGs (planetary defense grids) which could be something like planetary shields, but is actually a field covering the planet/planetoid with an intertwined mesh of energy beams meant to detonate bombardment missiles BEFORE reaching the atmosphere (added strategies here, too - only stops projectiles and NOT energy-based siege weapons); mesh also means that there are holes in the grid and not all missiles are stopped;

+ battlestations, starbases, starfortresses; not really sure how starbases and starfortresses could work for single system maps, but battlestations could be used as weapon's delivery platform and a control for coordinating planetary defenses;

= toughest hardpoint in any colonized planet's defenses;
= requires a celestial body with ample gravitational pull for feasible orbit (planets only, not planetoids);
= orbital movement means that its weapons can be avoided and attacking fleets can hit defenses on other points, though other tactical bonuses are still active;
= might be a great mounting platform for the siege superweapons such as the Novalith;

+ improved weapons platform;

= shielded;
= possibly could be a hangay bay of one race or another; the ones that are not hangar bay types can be given the ability to any location within the planet's current gravity well;
= separate weapon systems for each type of threat: flak/laser/bullet sprays for fighters, bombers; missiles/heavy guns/beam cannons for capital ships;
= fires weapon systems independently, so it can engage a ship and a fighter at once, but not two fighters or two ships;

6. A more accurate class system; something much closer like the following (ordered by comparative size and tonnage - not necessarily by firepower or purpose):

- fighters, bombers
- corvettes
- frigates
- destroyers
- capital ships
- super capital ships
- and so on and so forth, if much larger behemoths should appear in the SoaSE universe

- opens up the possibilities of a more varied class system; planetary CAP, fighter/bomber defense classes, anti-frigate raid classes, capital ship screens, etc.
- lower ship classes can be set as escorts to larger classes; in turn, larger classes become escorts for capital classes, and a full fleet hierarchy is established;
- from the above ship-to-ship escort system, the ability to create full-fledged battlegroups, task forces, let alone an entire imperial armada;


I'm still formulating the rest of the economic, cultural and covert angles, but they need some serious work. I fail at these on GalCiv, to tell you the truth, so what the heck.

I need a coke. Be right back.

1. I would love to see characters in Sins of a Solar Empire.

- Players would start with one character each. The character's name can be edited, just because.

- The character can either captain a cap ship or stay planetside. A cap ship's attack would receive appropriate buffs depending on the characters level (perhaps a leadership aura bonus for the fleet). Keeping them planetside would potentially help your economy and give a bonus to defenses.

- Naturally, if a planet or ship with a character were destroyed, the character would be lost.

- More characters could be recruited by exploring a planet.

- Colonizing the Pirate Planet could give you access to a Pirate King character or something.

2. It would be nice if there were commandos/spies

- Spies would be given their own "spy ship." It would be fast but very light armed.

- The spy ship could either board any enemy capital ship aind sabotage it (could be tricky to implement), or go down to a planet to sabotage allegiance/start stealing resources.

- Enemy commandos or spies could be removed by sending in your commandos if they breach your defenses.

- Ideally, a commando raid would take place while a fleet is launching a screen attack. This would give more impetus for smaller diversion attacks.

3. There should be other ways to clean out a planet.

- Culture is a great idea, but it would be nice if it went back to 'flipping' to the other side.

- Maybe extremely rich empires could buy off a planet that a fleet is stationed on. The lower the allegiance, the lower the price. I imagine that it would be really expensive though. It would be dependent on planet types too, I think.

- Conquer the planet using landing ships. This of course was necessitate the introduction of the army as a factor...

Anyway, those are my wishes. The rest is just gravy

I think that the idea for a Leviathan class ship (you could call it a super capital ship but personally I like the sound of Leviathan better) is an AWESOME idea. However to make it truly spectacular it should be a completely customizable ship. My idea is that to begin with you would first have to build a special factory to build one of these ships. Then you would get the choice of a base design that would decide the basic stats of the ship (such as hull points, armor, shields, sublight speed, etc) and what kinds of special abilities it would gain as it lvls up. You could then have a certain number of weapons and support slots to fill. This way you could decide what kind of weapons to use on the ship (like heavy weapons with slow recharge rates and high damage, light cannons or beam weapons with fast recharge but low damage, anti fighter/bomber autocannons, and possible heavy planetary bombardment weapons) and even on which part of the ship they should be located (front, left, right, or rear). Then you could decide what kinds of support slots to use like hangars, broadcast centers, long range sensors to detect incoming enemies, frigate factories, and maybe even extra shielding. In this way you could create a Leviathan ship for any need from a huge defensive mobile base that you could bring with your attacking force to act as a beachhead in enemy territory, to a vastly powerful offensive ship with lots of weapons and shielding.

I also would like to see a way to create your own race. This would allow for a much more individualized gameplay. My idea for this is actually similar to the one above only for ALL the ships at your disposal. Firstly you would start by picking the ship class you wanted to customize (frigate, cruiser, capital ship and maybe even more if they decide to make more classes). Then you would pick a base design which would essentially be the base stats (like hull points, shields, and so on) and would have a certain number of usable slots which you would fill with the weapons you wanted. Each weapon you add to the ship would add to its cost and build time so that you cant just make super powerful light frigates that are still cheap to build. Then you would have a choice of extras that wouldnt offer any tactical benefit but would make the ship look cool (I'm kinda drawn ablank as to what kinds of things to put in this category, just use your imagination). Then when you played a game with your custom race instead of researching prototypes, you would research weapons technology (like lrm missiles or autocannons) and when you have the research for the weapons you used in your custom ships researched you are aloud to build them. You would also start with basic technology so that you would be able to build light frigates to start off without having to research anything at the start of the game. I dont really know how you would design logistics buildings this way, but I think this would also work on planetary defense platforms as well!

Any ways those are my biggest hopes for the expansion! And before I wrap this up I just wanted to state my support for some other ideas I've read in this forum.
1) More classes of ships like a battleship class to fill the sizable gap between cruisers and capitol ships.
2) More random events like solar flairs that screw up the phase lanes for a while
3) BLACK HOLES!!!!!!!!!
4) More planet types (or maybe even subtypes like a cross between terran and desert or something)
5) An expanded use of politics and culture would be nice as at the moment they dont play any sort of major role, even on larger maps.
6) The differences between the races should also be more emphasized as in some ways they seem like the're all the same except for having different ship and structure designs.
7) Increased tactical control over fighting fleets (like movement during battle and such)
8) Greater variety in tactical planetary defense structures as well as planet based defenses so that they cant just send in a few ships and wipe out a colony before you can get your fleet to the planet.

However I just wanted to say that I think the game is already INCREDIBLY innovative and fun as it is! It just has a lot of potential and should be expanded upon until that potential is reached!

KUDDOS TO THE PEOPLE WHO MADE THIS GAME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!