There are a ton of great ideas so far in this thiread. Super impressed!

As for my own suggestions, (the ones I didn't see covered in this thread):

1) Dimplomatic AI

AI will try to ally, create good relations, with other players in a strategic manor. They won't just give you missions and ally with you if you complete them. They will try to build up with those players who are stronger, enemies with their enemy or in a strategic location (ie. on the other side of their enemy).

If under duress, AI will try to negotiate peace or cease fires with a winning opponent, but only to an extent (not compromise their position so they can't ever win). And if all else fails, instead of quitting the game, they might offer surrender with conditions (ie. a vassal state, control over planets without blood shed, or eternal alliance).

If there is one very strong opponent (alliance or individual) a few weaker players may try to negotiate a war pact where they all agree to attack an opponent together. This may involve some negotiations, like control of planets, delivery of resources, or ships. This could also be done less as an alliance and more of a back room deal (ie. attack my enemy X and I'll pay you X resources/minute until the deal is terminated).

2) Random Events (adding to above)

It would be really neat if random events occured like missions that pitted players against each other (or brought them together). This could be done in a few ways. One could be a type of artifact. If discovered on a planet it would be an ancient relic that has enormous significance to another player's populous. If that player acquires said planet, then they get some kind of reward (capital ship spawn, resources, +5% culture spread rate etc). Now this could be done through military means (conquering planet) or diplomatic (trading planet for something). This might also work as a type of alternative to victory a la new risk board game style. These random events could be missioned based or something, where if you complete 3/5 missions you win (the more customizable the win options the better.. especially for online play).

3) Exotic Resources (adding to above)

Have new types of resources spread throughout the map (colonizable or non colonizable) that act as modifyers. So for example, if resource X is in an astroid, and you send a colony ship to set up resource extractor, then that extractor will start trading with trade ports. Whever those trade ships trade at, then those gravity wells will receive a bonus. It could be bonus to mining, bonus to population growth, population max, ship creation speed etc.

This could be done in a nother way too, in that special upgrades or ships might require 3 special resources or something. Maybe the most powerful espionage missions would require that you control certain resources, or perhaps just a certain number of them. (putonium to sabotage a space station)

4) Generals, Governors and Governments

Generals: Can be added to a capital ship, which gives fleet bonuses. To make it more interesting you could have different types of generals (offensive to boost attack type attributes, defensive to boost hitpoints, electronic to boost antimatter, engineer to boost speed etc). These could be trained at special quarters (a new structure), out of starbases (or an upgrade could be added to starbases that have to be researched then purchased), capital planets or perhaps recruited from the black market. Bidding wars for mercenary generals! I'd prefer a mix of upgrade for star base and black market mercenaries.

How to get the general from the market to the desired ship. Perhaps the mercenaries come with a ship that spawns on your capital. Also, perhaps to access this black market you would have to upgrade a starbase with a mercenary bay or something. Then the ship would just spawn there, or the general would appear in that star base and then you could transfer them to any capital ship you like.

Governors: are similar to Generals but non militaristic. They could be added to planets (or starbases?) in order to boost specific qualities. They could increase production speeds, mineral outputs, taxes, trade, culture spread.. etc.

Perhaps Governors are more dynamic in that you give them orders (reduce mineral output and increase taxes) so that they are more of a specilizing character rather than a straight boost. It's an either or scenario. Lower crystal production to increase metal output for example. Slow population growth but increase max population. And these orders can be changed whenever you want, but perhaps with a timer penalty.

Governments: controlled at the capital and give different effects for the entire empire. This could be done in multiple ways. One could be a trade off type fashion that you enact a government ( chosen from a list) and each one has specific strengths and weaknesses. Consumer Democracy increases happiness (max population and growth) and trade, but gives negative effects when at war. Theocratic Democracy increases happiness(max population and growth) and culture spread rate, but gives negative effects when at war. Theocratic Facism decreases happiness (max population and growth), but increases culture spread rate and gives boosts while at war (increased damage).

Another way to do it is through a type of research, where you can only pick one path and then increase the effectiveness of that government through research. To change to another government would require a revolution (with negative penalties until it is over). Perhaps resources, or you might have to quell uprisings on planets. 

5) Dual Espionage 

I'd like to see espionage and counter espionage aspects added to the game where you can focus on one or the other or somewhere in between. This could be done through research, where the implementation is done through the actual map.  

I'm not sure what I think about a unit based spy system where you have to actually send in a spy ship to a system. I'd rather this be automatic and the actual spying process be done on a macro level. ie. you have a list of the spies you have hired and then you give them missions. These missions could then have different levels of depth with different probabilities of success. This way you could tell your spy to sabotage any building in this empire. This would have a higher probablity of success than say, sabotage this specific building in this specific gravity well.

Also, leveling up spies through xp would be neat. Perhaps customizing them as they level up like a cap ship. So better as sabotage (blowing up ships), or intelligence (revealing information), or unrest (disrupting economics or planet growth etc).

(now that I think about it, this is similar to the imperium galactica II style of espionage if anyone else remembers that, I remember it being pretty sweet. Corect me if I'm wrong haha)

6) Win Conditions

This one I'm a bit torn on. There are things like capture the flag, and king of the hill that would be good to implement, but they still seem very militaristic. 

We could go the route of age of empires and add a wonder win system (build one and win after a counter). We could do a Rise of Nations style where you have to build more than your enemy by X amount of points.

I'm trying to think of ways, though, to win on economics or culture or diplomacy. The random world events/missions could hit many of these in different ways. ie. become #1 in Credits, Metal and Crystal production for 5 minutes. To avoid someone winning in the first 5 minutes, dish out the missions 10 minutes into the game or something. A mission for culture could be "take over 5 planets via culture spread". Diplomacy could be "create an alliance with 3 or more players and succesfully defeat an opponent/conquer 10 planets/set up trade between 10 colonies from each player/share exotic resources with all players in the alliance". Something like Diplomacy missions might seem too easy, but remember missions are for only one person. So you'd have to sneakily make a 3 person alliance without the allies knowing why.

Also, giving the choice to players as to how the conditions are met before the game starts would help the online community (and offline as well to some extent). For example, you could choose between successfully completing 10 missions, 5 missions, 3 missions, 2 missions or 1 mission. If it's a wonder type victory, let the players decide how many wonders and how long of a timer. Perhaps add in some other quick win objectives like 75% of colonizable planets occupied (which can be changed to any number).

That's all I have for now. Which turned out to be a lot more than I expected. Any feedback on these I'd like to hear too!

i like this. i mean, as it is right now, even the stock standard "rack 'em and stack 'em" formation style is all over the place. you have LF,LF,LF,HC,HC,LF,HC,HC,HC,CARRIER,SUPPORTCRUISER,LR,LRF,SCOUT,SUPPORTCRUISER,HC

as in, its all over the place, with simply fleets (as in not very many types of ships) its very pretty

late game you jsut tend to get ships doing whatever they like

so id like (as a purely visual thing) different types of formations and more thought given to formations and the rules that apply.

on a side note, about formations, id like ships with a generally slower stationary turn rate (i.e. Assault Cruisers) to have maybe a slight to moderate turn speed boost when in fleet formations and jumping out of a friendly gravity well (if you are silly enough to have jump as a group enabled when retreating, you deserve to get drilled) or, alternatively, loosening the exact positioning rules of phase jumping, so that ship does not have to be pointing dead on at where it wants to go before it can phase jump

just sometimes its 1) irritating having to wait for one dumb Ogrov as it turns 5 degrees to the left, then 5 to the right, then 5 back to the left, for like 20 secs before some line of code kicks in and says "just jump for f***'s sake!" and 2) it would make timing multiple fleets jumping into a single (usually hostile) GW much easier.

i once wanted 2 fleets to jump in, one right after the other. I felt like the Aussies at Gallipoli when the artillery barrage ended, and the infantry were hanging around because the artillery guys watch and the infantry guys watch were off by 15 mins so when the artillery stopped, the enemy just got back into their fox holes.

same problem, i jumped a fleet in, told them to scramble here, told the second fleet to jump in and take those targets, and 35 secs later we are still waiting for a few damn Ogrovs

I think planets get maxed out too fast, too cheaply.

At the same time, it costs dearly at the early game to get rid of the underdevelopment penalty.

Let me suggest different mechanics for upgrading planets...

I think planet development should be more gradual. Currently, the system is like 'planets send all money to Empire State Bank, govenment pays for improvements after cutting through the red tape'. Planets should have a slider where I can tell it to keep part of the income for it to improve itself.The Empire is giving partial autonomy for planets to upgrade.

The upgrades would come in smaller proportions too. If I am to get 24 tactical slots maxed, let the planet buy it one at a time.By default, the planet governor (AI) would upgrade stuff automatically, in a distributed fashion. The are also 5 sliders to control how much of the domestic budget goes to each of the 5 improvements (pop cap, defense, logistic,tactical,artifacts). Beside each slider I should also have available an input area where I can set a hard cap (use no more than X upgrade slots on this planetary trait).

The mechanics could be different too. Say an earth-class planet has 200 upgrade slots. you get -0.1 credits/sec for each slot below 40. When you colonize a planet, you are going to find some infrastructure already built, so you are likely to find 10-30 slots already allocated. Except in the case of planets with the bonus 'developed', where you get an additional 10-30 points preallocated, or 'wild planet', where you get only 0-10 allocated infrastructure points.

Population is also the most important asset. you need people, thus money to maintain stuff.

Each point in population gives you 0.1 credits/sec (2 billion pop). Each defense structure/logistic/tactical point costs 0.1 credits/sec.

Bombardment should be catastrophic for population unless there are defenses in place to preserve them, which should encourage suicide siege runs on undefended planets.

Each planet would have a cap for each attribute. The limits could add up to values above 200 though, which leaves room for customization (I love choices! ). If I can have up to 150 population, 15 defense, 40 tactical and 25 logistic, I must pick and choose which upgrades I want to take. In this case, if I max defense, tactical and logistic (80 points), I will have only 120 points to spend on population. That amounts to 120 - 80 = 40; 40 * 0.1 = 4 credits/sec unmodified.

Depending on your cultural level, you will only get part of that money, especially if your planets shares culture with a faction you are at war with (see my previous post).

Of course, the above numbers are just examples, testing would be needed to find out the best balance between values.

All these ideas are good, even though I've only read about 20 replies.  Just remember that if someone sabotages your production rate, there must be a way to reverse the effects....such as technology or a military crackdown on that specific planet/grav well.

Hmm Idea for spies and etc. Intelegence and counter intelegence.

This should be a menu panel option and not an imgame unit.

It'S a panel were you fun your "SPY" "Interlegence" and "Counter-Interlegence" activaties. The more funding yuo place into it the more imformation or sabotage you will caus ein your enemies empire. You should also be able to fun for defending againts spyign and intelegence. How much funding determins how succesfull youll sabotage and spy or prevent the enemy from doing that to you.

The funding should be a Credit per second fun that you can adjust during the game.

My gripe about upgrading planets is that it's done far too easily just by allocating resources.

Trade is the other element that should be upgraded at the same time as piracy and diplomacy.  The non-combat ships- trade and refinery- are vastly underused in Sins, just graphics and distractions for pirates.  If you had to build them in shipyards after the purchase of the ports and refineries, that would make them valuable in themselves.  As it is, an attacking fleet would just destroy the base installation, the ships are of no interest.

Once these ships have an independent existence and can be allocated routes- more profitable, or safer, or even with the extractors or ports of other factions- then there are other options as well.  Perhaps trade ships could also have the ability to support infrastructure upgrades, cheapening the cost by more than the value of their cargo, if deployed at the right type of planet?

If convoys and ambushes could be added to Sins, the combat would become vastly more detailed and the game much deeper.  However, it seems to be heading toward a 'one big battle' style, I hope this changes. 

@DesConnor

i like the idea of manually setting trade routes etc, although id also like to be able to set it to auto cast just in case im in a hurry or just want to spam a bunch of them for a quick burst in income etc

however, i would also like for either civilian ships to not affect fleet supply as it is now, or give them their own fleet supply. the one thing i hate about RTS with pop caps is that workers and medics etc count as population. its logical, but irritating because if you want to max out your military you need to destroy most of your non military units

so yeah, id like civilian ships either to not need fleet supply, or have their own fleet supply seperate from military fleet supply

on this note what do people think of a researchable ability to assign 'police forces' to optimum trade routes or heavy trade/refinery routes?

Lore Expansion in Diplomacy Upgrades

One of the reasons I have really enjoyed the 4X games was the "Clash of Civilizations" stories that are intrinsic to the game's Lore. 

Where I believe a great deal of unexplored potential remains in Sins is really getting into the storyline of these races. We have a general understanding of their history, origins and present state. How has war changed their societies? How would they truly interact with one another through diplomatic channels? Others have mentioned minor races as an option to integrate into this expansion, how would they be affected? What is their stance taken on this conflict between the major civilizations? 

Another lingering question I had was whatever happened to the mysterious force chasing the Vasari through the universe? Are they expected to appear in this part of the universe? I had interpreted the original lore conerning the dark fleet as foreshadowing the approach of this unseen menace. Can this force be introduced in this expansion? In our own planet's history, immense diplomatic interactivity was often the result of a change in balance of power that made old allies enemies and old enemies new allies. Imagine the diplomatic upheaval if the three major races were suddenly challenged by the ancient rival of the Vasari. (Birth of the Federation Players can recall how races suddenly rushed to form alliances when the Borg appeared from the depths of space) 

I would not presume to add more to the specific mechanics of a diplomacy expansion in light of the posts and fantastic ideas presented above. But I do hope that the expansion allows us to learn more about the races themselves, perhaps their heroes (mentioned above) their government, ways of life, societies, and forms of communication, and ancient foes that are all reflected in the game play as the story of this epic universe unfolds. 

the general idea of multiple sliders each displaying one dimension of internal policy decisions is actually quite good. fairly simple and direct, yet can give lots of strategic options. though I always thought that research should somehow play a role in those internal decisions and I can't see a very good concept for that. maybe more research could allow you to take more extreme positions or it could allow you to change your alignment faster/ with less cost involved. maybe that's a start, but it's a bit unsatisfying in the research aspect. good basic idea though.

YAY, some people actually like my idea!

Shadowhal: I have a feeling that research could effect the sliders, like... devlopement mandate (4+ logistics slots) would definate do something... (towards central planning maybe?... or maybe... you need to be close to central planning in order to reserach devlopment mandate... that might be intresting... multiple research alternatives depending on your government... herm...) and I am also sure moving the sliders could be made to effect research.

Tkins: While a complex game mechanic would be awsome... for an expansion pack to an already complex game... I would think that keeping it simple would allow a player to quickly set his sliders, and go do something else... mousing over the sliders should definatly give all the effects its current position gives, and the effects of moving it to a certain location would be, but keeping it rather simple and obvious would also be important so that it would not take much away from other important things... like everything else.  Simple enough also means you could hang the sliders from the bottom of the little blackmarket box or something.

You know... it doesnt have to be sliders... there are at least a half dosen different ways I can think of to represent those different dimentions of your government. 

Pbhead, that idea is truly awesome!

I want to see them too, but they wont come in this expansion. Perhaps the opening cinimatic could be changed to this though:

A lone Vasari, sitting in a throne. A glowing computer screen in front of him with a small pulsing planet picture. The top of the screen says "early warning station #23465, final line of defence". Then it goes dark.

something to that effect. Then they show up in the last expansion.

i will admit that i havent gone back and read everyone elses ideas, but here are a few ive had...

Focused Insurgency
TEC ability to focus insurgent attacks.  Could be used by players to weaken choke points or faint attacks without committing fleet or identity.  User could right click a foreign planet and select focus insurgent button.

Diplomatic Vessel
Ship class provides a kind of mobile culture.  Limit on number of diplomats/ships (similar to caps).  Abilities would let it benefit allies or the player's empire.  ie.  Build a diplo ship and send it to an empire under cease-fire.  at the homeworld of the empire it can sit and slowing increase happiness, provide trade bonuses, etc.

Rededicate Station
Ability for all races to remove upgrades on stations and exchange them for different upgrades.  IE.  base at  choke point begins life as a battles station heavily upgraded for weapons and armor.  later it is "rededicated" and the user can change its focus to special abilities like culture, trades, factories w/e.

there could be a cost for the "rededication ceremony", but then upgrades can be salvaged for a fraction of resources back.  New upgrades applied, and are locked until the next "rededication".