ok well these are my thoughts to make the game as real world as possible (for obvious reasons since its a sci-fi game and all).

the main thing would be deplomecy. when u start a game u and all other factions are neutral and are all able to trade peacfully. make a player/bot then choose to declare war or for an alience. the idea here being that the bot can choose alies and have those alies actially help, as would the alies you choose. more over if u and ur enemy are alied with a common faction they choose a side. also pooled resources between alies money, metal, crystals, etc

another feature i would like to see is a spy "ability" like make a ship thats sole purpose is to spy, to do this make it only detectable by a captial ship.

another thing would be to be able to "patrol" phase lanes and stop ships from entering ur gravity well. this would work best for blocking enemy fleets and giving ur planet a better first line defense, or to blockade a planet so that no ships (except urs) could get to that planet to better pretect it from the spy feature.

one last thing i would like to see is a resolve feature, which would enable you to strike a compromise and end a war between you and ur oponent, either by giveing money, metal, crystals, or a planet/asteroid.

these are desired in sp as i dont play online but i would like to know what every one thinks about these ideas or what you would add/remove from the list