When choosing attributes for your race, there should be a negative option for a few items.
I.e. weapons -10% which would give you an additional point(s) to spend on other attributes.

Similar to MOO2

How about a warning popup whenever you are about to purchase something when it will put your treasury in the red? I've already accidentally made two massive purchases that put me over $2000 in the red when all I wanted to to was check to see how much the item cost to rush-build....

And I second the idea of not having planetary invasions = massive genocide -- should be possible to conquer planets with the former residents left over (ala MOO2).

1) I think that some planets with hostile enviroments may have SEVERAL factors (eg. radioactive AND toxic, heavy gravity AND barren AND toxic) simultaneously. A player must have all corresponding tech to colonize such planets. This seems to be more realistic

2) Planets with hostile enviroments may have some bonuses. For example, heavy gravity have defense bonuses against invasion, radioactive worlds often contain areas with production bonuses etc.

I support this view. A LOT.

Here is a refined idea of mine for the expansion ...

1. Customizing opponents; allow a trade meter from " never to frequent "
- this way the AI would either trade with you frequently or never during the game.

2. Allow a cloaking device built on scout or attack ships only after researching the right tech. Maybe after researching the counter-espionage tech will enable cloaking device.

3. Allow a tech to counter the cloaking device. Maybe sensors level five will enable anti-mirror sensors on ships that will allow to see cloaked ships.

4. Allow for each race to research a "super device" to be built on planets just like the "super personality" option unique for each race or having the option to customize while creating an opponent. For example ...

Invincibility grid = it will temporarily shield your entire solar system from any attack. The shield will prevent all social construction and slow all military construction as long as it's on since it requires alot of energy to sustain it. Once you power-off the device, it will take significant amount of time to re-use it.

Shadow field processor = it will make all of your ships around the planet at a certain radius cloaked even with the latest sensor tech as long as the ships remain in the area of influence. This tech will be permenant.

Super-nova conductor = it will destroy an entire solar system after blowing up the sun. It's a device that you can install it only on a scout ship with no other modules on it except the "super-nova conductor". All you have to do is fly the scout ship with the device on a collision course towards the sun, if your luck enough not to get intercepted or else it won't work. It will take significant amount of time to build another one.

Worm-hole device = it will open a stable one way conduite to anywhere in the galaxy which lasts only 4 weeks. You have to place it on a scout ship to initiate the point of entry and click on the map for its destination. It will take significant amount of time to build another one.

Super brain wave emmiter = at a certain radius around the planet, it will automatically convert enemies hostage along with their ships; thus using their ships at will as long as your in the area of influence. The emmiter will prevent all social construction and slow all military construction as long as it's on since it requires alot of energy to sustain it. Once you power-off the emmiter, you no longer have control over those ships, so you hope you caused enough damage to other ships or made peace.

Nano-probe bloom = at a certain radius around the planet, this device will cause all enemy ships go crazy. It will attack all systems in the ships by making it lose some engines, weapons, defences, sensors etc... The ships will lose their effectiveness, lose their logistics and can't remain in fleets. The device can only be used once but the effect on the ships will be permanent. You can build the device again but it will take significant amount of time.

Bio-viral technology = this will create a virus specific to a race that will slowly kill their population unless they find the cure which will take time. All you have to do is install the device on a scout ship and fly it to the enemy race's planet. And from there, the virus will spread from one planet of theirs to another. It will take time to research another virus specific to another race.

I like the espionage Idea of having to research spy's before knowing any crutial information about other civs..

Most, if not all, of what I would like has been mentioned somewhere, but I'm just adding my name to it...

I'm going to try and stick with things that can probably be done for an update as compared to a new game.

-Rebalancing of ethical alignments; and/or bonuses to making "good" decisions when prompted.

-Teams/Coalitions: If I am able to select "Team" for another race in the setup screen to side with myself (which is already there) then I would like to be able to put other races against us.

-Revamp Espionage: The info is pretty much there already if you know where to look, in general the information that you can/do learn is not really essential as is. Also, there is no drawback to using Espionage whatsoever (or true benefit for the Super Spy ability), diplomatic ramifications would be nice (either lowered perception of your race (relations) or demands)

-Economic Tile bonuses

-Agree that respawning anomolies would be very nice

-more portraits/logos

-More available starting points for Custom Races

-I'm sure that the defense bug will be fixed, so no worries there (since the stated idea is right, implentation just didn't work out correctly)

-Rebalancing of tech improvement modules, there are many times I have found it to be more cost effective and space efficient to use multiple lower techs than one new tech (example, I have found the Ion Drive to be the most cost effective, so I often use it multiple times instead of the higher engine techs, esp when I have full miniturization skills...I wish I had it front of me, but like the Hyperwarp MK III costs 140 with a speed of 5 while I can use Warp V (or similar) with a cost of 60 and speed of 3 (thus two Warp Vs is better and cheaper than a HW MK III)


Things I'd like to see eventually

-Borders

-Request/Offer in diplomacy screen (actually, I'd like a more complex diplomatic model ideally)

-With the UP:
-Greatest influence may pick from a short list of topics (4?) for vote
-Being able to see where your allies/close relationship races are leaning for their vote, there's nothing I hate more than me and my ally cancelling each other out.

-A map/scenario editor

Thanks for asking all of us!!!

btw, Serptico, I really like those "super weapon" ideas, they just sound cool   

I like the borders idea of yours too

A keyboard command that completes all current starship automoves.

An alternate tech victory option for AI factions. Instead of ending the game when an AI researches tech victory, that race simply disappears from the map and all of their planets become available for colonization. To prevent abuse, make all of the tech victory techs above Discovery Spheres non-transferable like the spore tech.

As a fan of Civ4 who just got the Gold edition, I have a few interface gripes.

1) Exiting the shipyard when you entered it through a planet build ship screen should take you back to the planet, not the main screen. I often design a new ship after a planet finishes a production, but when I finish, I forget what planet I was working on and have to search for it. Which brings us to point

2) Fix the search for planet function, currently it seems to go to a random planet with the same starting letter. Playing in a large map makes it quite useless. Also make a shortcut (Ctrl-F) for it.

3) When exiting a planet screen, the map should be centered on that planet, not the previous position. Often when I just use the event icons to build stuff, I don't realize a planet is in a backwater, or is in enemy territory. Knowing that helps know what to build there.

4) The Esc key should merely exit the current screen, not go to the game menu. It'd be fine to go to the game menu on the main map, but it's kinda useless when in the shipyard or diplomacy screens. (a little Civ4-ish I know)

and a few other items

5) Allow the automoves of ships to occur at the beginning of a turn, not the end (again, civ4). A game option in the menu would be nice. I know its so you can cancel a move later, but I rarely use it, and it would speed things up a bit at the end of turn.

6) Queuing research as mentioned would be nice, as would the spying improvements.

7) Allow starbases to queue what improvements to build next and to automatically build them when the next constructor comes along. Then you could get a planet to set a rally on a starbase and voila! instant starbase improvement with little work!.

8) Allow when 'upgrading' a ship to simply add a mk2 or mk3 to the end of the previous design's name automatically (ala Sword of the Stars). As well as automatically deleting the previous design. These would be best implemented with a game option for what specifics you would want (eg. delete or obsolete design, retire ships, etc).

-Enable scrolling with the keyboard
-Allow starports to carry more ships
-Enable an all-launch button from the planets
-Enable "only fleet upgrades" in addition to the option of upgrading all ships of that class
-Enable an option where you can build the same ship on all planets
-Enable an option where you can set all production in the same area ( military or social or research ) on all planets

1) More planet tile resources that correspond to the things you can find in anomalies (bonuses for cash, soldiering, defense, speed, etc.). Exploiting the resource would require the player to place a relevant building on the tile. Perhaps surplus resources could even be made tradable as in Civilization IV.

2) The tactical combat looks good but feels a bit superfluous. The action would be much more like a dogfight if the ships could only fire when their weapons were facing the target. This would make speed and maneuverability more important when designing ships and fleets. Do I pick an extra engine or an extra weapon? Do I make fleets of small fast ships or big slow ones? It would also be useful to be able to choose to attach weapons on fixed points or turrets (with a tradeoff in size/cost).

3) The UPC is an interesting but underused aspect of the game design. It would be nice to have more control over the agenda. How about a rotating chairmanship where the current chairman gets to choose which resolution the UPC votes on? An option to choose the frequency of meetings would be nice. If the UPC's importance is boosted, an option to buy votes in the diplomatic screen would be useful.

you can rename uncolonized planets, even planets colonized by another player. you just can't rename zero-quality planets. or stars.

I would love a convenient way to know which modules can currently be built on any given starbase (and exactly what they do) without having to send a constructor there to find out. The way it is now, you have to GUESS about where you should send your constructors, and if you are wrong you waste a lot of time.

An quick and easy way to allow this would be to just use the exact same dialog box that pops up when you send a constructor there to build (showing you what you can build) - only you can't actually build it without a constructor there.

I just got DA and it rocks! But still I thought that some things should have been added/improoved. It will be greatly appreciated even if you just consider adding these:
-It will be cool to have planets with more than one "extreme" feature so a planet can be radioactive AND heavy gravitized.
-More logos,avatars would be nice.
-More types of extreme colonization.
-Huge hull ship can have auxiliary fighters, like small 10 fighter each of 1-2 attack.

I have a few more suggestions for an update.

First of all I like the suggestion of giving custom races more points for their individual startup abilities however, why not just give them an extra page of options with 15 points and 10 points in the regular options that way it would be more like the regular races.

Secondly the Thalian Empire and the Yor Collective both have miniteraztion bonus's which you can't pick in the start up settings, it would be nice to have that as an option bonus for any race including custom races for you to spend your points on.

I don't know what anyone else thinks about this but, that's my suggestion.

I like that; it reminds me of the ascended Ancients from Stargate. I think their planets should keep their buildings as well. Then again, it may depend on alignment: good races may want to remove their buildings so that it wouldn't change the balance of power in the galaxy, while neutral races might not care that much about it. Evil races... well, evil ascended beings would do horrible things (I can think of two examples on Stargate SG-1 in later seasons); maybe the present behavior should be retained for evil races that get a Technology Victory.

Another issue: 'Starport Full' and minor races. In the game I'm playing now, the LentzLandians clogged their starport with freighters; I think they took up all ten slots. If they can't have that many trade routes, they shouldn't build all those freighters. Maybe the AI should be coded to never build more freighters than they can use (possibly they should start building them again as they research the next trade technology); I can't think of a good reason to have ten freighters if you can only have six trade routes.

Also, on a related note, minor races seem to fill their starport a lot and then stop building ships. Maybe they should scrap older junk heaps to make room for new ships (or, if they're the same size, upgrade them).

Research military doctrines for fleet combat that add modifiers based on a matrix comparason to the enemy's doctrine.

Allow custom races to pick the Super trait of their choice

Probably the most important thing I've suggested so far (seriously)

In the ship designer, can we have a little slider that adjusts the transparency of the pieces, so we can find hard points that are obscured by other pieces. Also, if it could select the hard point in the front of the view, rather than the one behind (meaning you have to rotate the very precisely to position the piece) that would be awesome too.

Custom Race ideas:
1. Ability to name their star and planets separately. Maybe we should even be able to design their whole star system, spending some amount of points like the starting abilities and technologies. You could put all of the PQ into one planet (like the Thalans have) or spread it out more evenly (I think the Korx system is like this). Maybe you could include planets with special traits; say you start with a second PQ12 planet but it's radioactive; that could have an interesting effect.

2. This is minor, but I think we should be able to specify the short and long form of the race's name (like Terrans/Terran Alliance, Drengin/Drengin Empire, Korx/Dominion of Korx, et al.). I believe there's a place for both in dialogue menus, and it isn't always the first word of the race's name (like the aforementioned Dominion of Korx). The short form might not even appear in the long form: for instance, I could have the Goa'uld/United Alliance of the System Lords.

Map maker would be wonderful (one that works)
Also remove the 4x food. Basically useless since have to use the rest of the tiles for morale.

chris.

I think the AI values starbases (especially resources) too highly when it comes to trade. One influence miner, half the map away from their empire is not worth 5 decent developed planets.

*Make minor races EXACTLY like major races except they don't start with very little money (maybe 500 instead of 5000), no ships, less population (maybe half), no technology, and no starport. However, they would colonize, build fleets, and explore just like any other civ (once they finally get up and running).

*Make it so that ships orbiting a planet automatically fight as a fleet.

*Add in logisitcs and miniturization to the abilities list.

*Introduce negative ability modifers (ex. you get 1 ability point but your economy gets a -10% modifier).

*Also have higher levels of positive ability modifiers that cost more ability points.

*Rebalance one of the base races so they have an innate edge in influence.

*Make it so that you can completely automate either a planet or a your entire empire so that the AI will select which ships to build and will handle all of your planetary management, but you still control your sliders and your fleets.

*Have an option in diplomacy where a player can coordinate attacks on an enemy with an allied or cobelligerant AI.

*Give spies the ability to cause a planet to revolt

*In general I feel spies maybe useful, but the amount of micromanagement spies added to the game isn't worth the trouble. Hopefully you can add more functionality to spies.

*Allow fleet trading in the diplomacy menu.

*Introduce economic bonus squares.

*Increase the number of ability points custom races start with.

*Include a repair module for military starbases

*Allow military starbases to install a module where that gives them a factory/starbase ability, so they can can construct ships at a very slow pace.

*Allow civs (both the player's civ and the AI) to determine what to vote on at the UP. Determine which civ gets to propose the resolution based on their influence. Civs with more influence will have a greater probability of getting the chance to set the agenda. Also, include more substantial resolutions. I'd love for the UP to work more like the UN in SMAC.

*Give hulls innate advantages against other hulls. Tiny and small hulls should do double damage aginst large and huge hulls. Large and huge hulls should do double damage to medium hulls. Medium hulls should do double damage to small and tiny hulls.

*Add command modules that have similar effects as a military starbase as ship components, however they would have a much smaller radius than a military starbase.

Please change ground combat if possible.

Things that wouldn't be massive new features, eh?

* More random events.

* Speaking of which, I wish random events would continue even after Xeno Ethics. It's silly that it's like "Okay, we're officially Neutral. Woo hoo, now I won't have to weasel out of a random issue ever again!" The events could still happen, but maybe you'd be locked into your alignment's choice (or maybe you could choose differently each time, but have to pay for it).

* Have there be two relationship ratings: how the other race acts to your face (ie the normal rating you see on the foreign relations screen), and how they REALLY feel about you (which you can't see unless you have good espionage and/or deduce it from their empire's actual actions). This way, evil or manipulative races could put you off-guard with friendly posturing even as they're preparing to conquer you.

* Have the different races value different traits other than Good/Evil. Right now, every race likes treaties and trade. Every race likes military strength. Every race hates excessive influence. Every race hates it when you wipe out too many races. The Yor want to wipe out all organic life, but you'd never know it from all the freighters and stuff they'll send and accept. It'd be nice if a few races felt threatened by bloated militaries (hurting relations if your military rating is too high), if a few races felt high influence is cool ("We admire your strong culture"), if some of the evil races like you for conquering too many others ("We admire all the ass-kicking you do"), if isolationist races hate you for setting up trade ("We resent you trying to make us dependent"), if the murderous Yor had a killer economy (machines don't need sleep or free time) but no trade with those miserable organic races, and so on. This would make the diplomacy game more interesting, because there would be fewer things you can do that automatically win over everyone.

* Give spies a "observe quietly" option...for when you want to learn about a race (raise your espionage level), but not disrupt their production. Instead of putting them on a specific square, you could put them in a special box or something, where they can't be eliminated, but aren't holding their target back.