Just a few ideas I had of things I'd like to see in the game. Fantastic game--this one has the possibility of beating out MOO2 as most played for me. But the ideas:

1. ANIMATED SHIP PARTS: What if some of the ship parts had definite animations they performed in combat? For instance, a part that moved 90 degrees along a fixed arc, or others that rotated, etc. etc. Consider the engines of Serenity in the Firefly TV series. What if your ships had the same spinning engine core? Or rotating sensor dishes?

2. SOLID TERRITORY COLORS ON MAIN MAP: I would love to see an option to have a race's territory marked on the MAIN map with a solid color area. In my opinion this would make viewing the territories much easier on that main map. It might be a bit redundant to the minimap but it would be a great visual aid.

3. NO MORE IDENTICAL RACE COLORS! I for one was greatly annoyed to see that races can share the same color! I was the same color as another race (not a minor one either) in one of my games, making it very difficult to discern. Furthermore, in another game when I shared the same color as minor races it's been a HUGE pain to discern who is who.
I suggest either make it impossible to chose race colors that others use or set the colors to either be assigned randomly, taking into account player choices, or simply set the game to ALWAYS make sure that all races have different colors.

Great great game! These are just a few simple ideas to, in my opinion, make it better.

-James