Something I forgot to mention earlier, better pre-game customisation in regards to the appearance of your ships. Yeah now we can choose colours, but there should be options like "glossify" (if that's even a word) where we can make the ship hulls more glossy and shiny, or "damage" where we can make our hulls look scratched and scorhed, and "tint", basically it can be one colour (for example white) but reflects light as blue (or any colour) giving it a nice multicoloured sheen.

Also nameplates, this would most likely be ship jewelry (or put in the the ship style cusomisation in DA), where you could attach a plate that would display the name of the ship on the side(s), these could include light sources to illuminate the lettering.

Softening up the target with various weapons like the tidal, mass drivers etc

Isn't it strange that you can't have orbital bombardment because it leads to mass genocides, yet you can have such a powerful control over nature (invasion tactics) that in the end result in genocides??

1. U.P content/options/interaction. flesh it out more, it has a lot more potential

2. Minor races turn into major races once they research HyperDrive and a set number of basic technologies prerequisite to their race becoming Major. This process should be play tested so the colonization phase will be well underway by the time they meet their prerequisites. As Major races, they have influence, a portrait in the Major race diplomacy screens, the ability and AI to expand, and a spot on the U.P. also add more Minor races.

3. AI fixes and improvements.
- AI and players should have the option to decline gifts.
- AI should be offering to sell technologies that are considered sufficiently proliferated. Especially to minor races and technologically backward civilizations. its profit to them at almost no cost because those techs are already proliferated among their rivals. as it is the player beats them to the punch everytime and cheeses off all his obsolete techs for their entire treasuries.
- overall upgrade tweaks and balancing to Problem solving AI. if an AI falls too far behind in any one aspect of the game, it becomes crippled and basically waits to be devoured. I would like to see civilizations tackling these problems with every resource and action available to them and weighing out the best way to approach/solve a problem.

ie if peace is more of a priority than war, they trade/build their way out of a critically low rating. if war is a better possibility, they put a high priority on their enemies' resources/planets that repair their problem rating -- until peace becomes a priority again, or until they repair the critically low rating and can safely get back to concentrating on their original AI victory priority.

that doesn't quite cover what i mean. AI is just one of those things that can always be improved on.

Do not be so sure. The Stardock team is pretty good at doing things the players have suggested and many of them scan the forums on a daily basis.

I suspect that suggesting things that are not too hard to program will make them more likely to be implemented. But then again, they did add asteroids....

First of all, Fighters need inherent defenses when those big ol' cap ships come in to play. Too often I find it that a single dreadnought can just own 6-10 small/tiny hulled ships with little effort in one go (though this is better than them wasting their awsome firepower on a single fighter). Maybe you would seperate ocmbat on the basis of hull types. I.E...
Fighters (Tiny/Small)
-Forward Firing (Basically when you just attach the raw weapon, can only be used on other small/tinies and are more effective then forward fires.)
-Turrets for small (Corvettes, bombers.)
-Bomber weaponry. (Requires a weapon to be 'linked' to a bomber module. I.E: Laser attached to Westinghouse 33x Hyperion Fusion Engine turns one laser cannon in to a bomber weapon that can hit Medium-Huge hulls.)
-Easily mass produced (Tinies produced in squadrons of 5, smalls in 3, or you can choose how to produce them. May be required in a tech?)
-Inherit 5/3 Pc speed.

Frigates/Light Cruisers. (Mediums)
-Forward/Broadsides (Same, except these can only hit big ships, Medium+)
-Turrets (Self-Explanatory.)
-Capacitators/Reactors (Like the Bomber Modules, these boost up weaponry to maximum effeciency against Large+)
-Carrier modules F/LC. (Ok, here's how it works. It basically boosts the repair rate for another small/tiny in the same sqaure by 3 HP, more CMs increase the number of ships healed.)

Cruisers/Battlecruisers (Large)
-Forward/Broadside (See above.)
-Turrets (See above)
-Bomber modules (Once again, see above)
-Carrier Module, C/BC (Basically a boosted repair rate of 5 HP per turn to 3 fighters per module)

The Mother of All Ships...er...Dreadnoughts (Huge!)
-Do I need to repeat the first three/Four?
-Main Guns. Basically, you have a choice of a Main Gun module, one per ship, but one for each of three weapon types. It basically increases that one weapon type's output by 10-20% depending on tech.
-Mobile Shipyard (Acts as Carrier Module, but heals Large and Mediums by 10 HP per turn to 1 ship per Module)

Shipyards (Starbase, seperate type.)
-Research modules that allow you to build up to medium ships or mass produced tinies (I.E: It can pump out a squadron of 5 tinies, or construct a single medium.)
-Acts as a planet for combat purposes (can be garrisoned.)

Starbases.
-Garrisonable.
-Streamline this thing, please. And make them more powerful as time goes on. Maybe after a certain research their base structure is linked to the huge hull and not the large?
-Capturable.

Planets
-Ditch. The f***ing. 10 ship limit.
-Ground combat needs to be beutified, and maybe throw something in like what they do with Sid Meir's Pirates!
-Ecumonopolii (City-Planets, like Coruscant.) basically, when you have a 20+ square planet and cover every square, it becomes an ecomnopolis and gets increased land defenses. And industry. And economy.

Economy
-What the hell is with shipbuilding? I see a 104 Trillion Credit income go to -23 BC from building a single ship! Ok, maybe a bit exxagerated, but you get the point.
-Throw a dab of Sim-City (Zoom in close enough, and you get to see the ships moving about on trade routes and stuff.)

That's all I have for now...