Only been playing this game for a coupe of days, but am well and truly hooked. One thing I've been thinking about though is how the maps dont contain much more than stars and planets as far as strategic factors.
In Civ games for example, mountain ranges affect movement of certain units and deep sea waters dont allow early ships travel through, but seeing the GC environment is all about space you cant really add much too it.
How about nebulae though? All of us being SF freaks would remember many instances where ship passage/ combat was influenced by nebulae/ other phenomenon; classic eg is Star Trek II(? I think) Wrath of Khan where fighting in nebula caused major probs with sensors shields etc...
What if small/large expanses of our map were nebulae? You could have varying classes of them, from relatively benign ones causing sensor to dramatically drop in effective range, minimise shield and/or weapons effectiveness, to severe gas storm like ones that cause major damage to ships per turn within their range. It would take civs high research techs to overcome many of these problems and be able to safely navigate through. All of a sudden moving from point A to B wouldnt necessarily be so simple.
Im not sure how much this would likely affect AI routines though. Probably not feasible at this stage Im thinking.... wormholes would be really cool too now that I think about it... oh well, one can only dream...
