This is a list of idea's I have come up with in the last week, please feel free to suggest your own here or build upon / add to my own or other's, any idea's posted here I will add to this part with full credit (or part if it's an addition) to the idea's suggester.
All the idea's are split into category's so people can shoot to the part's they want to look at.
1. Stars
I think that the stars in spaceo should play a part in the way planets function, obviously you can't really add negative bonuses because people on the wars servers who already have planets could suffer but here is just a few ideas for what they could do;
Black Hole: +50% to planet combat, due to the large gravity it would be harder for ships to manoeuvre and harder for the marines to combat in the light that it produces (or rather takes away)
Brown Dwarf M: +25% capacity, As the closest to sol's natural light it makes people feel more at home, and more people wish to come to the planet.
White Dwarf: +25% credits, due to the huge light given of by this star the planet can produce more power through solar energy, cutting the planets energy costs.
Blue SuperGiant: Open to suggestion's, but please keep it sensible.
Red L Dwarf: Open to suggestion's, but please keep it sensible.
Late-M Dwarf: Open to suggestion's, but please keep it sensible.
2. Space Structure's
There are very few space structure's, and I think there should be more structure's to increase the amount of things players can invest in, also this would open up a wide variety of new research, here's just a few ideas of my own.
Structure's
Shipyard: You choose a design from the ones you have, and then the automated shipyard will syphon resources from your mining facility to create a set amount of ships every hour, ships created this way will be classed as “in hanger” this is basically the same as a ship In reserve, apart from the fact you don't have to pay to get them out (you will have to go to the facility though). If the facility is attacked the ships will scramble to defend it and become a part of the system fleet's, however if the facility is destroyed with ships in the hanger 20% are lost, and the remaining 80% will retreat to your mothership in reserve to prevent further damage and the power increase a sudden influx of ships would cause.
Warp Gate: For a small cost you can teleport yourself to any point in the galaxy, the cost is in diamonds and would be calculated on a turn cost to reach the destination * by a pre-set so C=T*A, basically it swaps turns for Diamond, but can only be used if its both friendly and you are at it, if there is another warp gate at your destination that is friendly, the diamond cost is removed as the other gate can keep the wormhole stable as your mothership travels through it.
Space Command Center: Grants Sovereignty over a system, as well as providing a boost to all structures and fleets in the system, a must have for any commander who wants to try and secure a system and the economic benifit's it can bring to your planet and mining facility are limitless
Base Bonus:
Fleet support bonus: Open to suggestion's, but please keep it sensible.
Mining facility production bonus: Open to suggestion's, but please keep it sensible.
Planet Production bonus: Open to suggestion's, but please keep it sensible.
Upgrades
Mining facility warp module: Pretty much self explanatory, if the space station can get one, and space stations are pretty useless, why doesn't the mining facility get one?
Command Bridge: An upgrade for the space station, comes after warp module, and gives +10% fleet support bonus.
3. Battle's
I thought to myself “what can emi do to make battle's more interesting” then I had a few idea's that I think could add a huge amount of variety.
Range: This may be hard to code as you'd have to add things like how close you want to get to the opponent before you start the fight, would be a nice feature to see, but the problem is that this is probably the one that would require the most work.
Speed: If range was added then it would help you close in. if not it would just add to my next idea.
Evasion: This would be based upon speed and hull size, it gives a fleet a chance to partly or completely evade an enemy's attack, due to the fact its more effective on small and fast ships it would bring power back to swarmers as they would be more likely to survive an attack
4.Systems
I think there are many things that can be done to improve systems, my main suggestion would add a huge boost to alliance power.
System “slots”: so this basically allows multiple allied people to build planets and stations, all in the same sector, station amounts would be based upon the planet slots like so, sector A has 2 planet slots, it also has a base of one station slot, so one station and mining facility can be built and then once a planet has been built 2 more station slots would open in ORBIT of the planet, allowing the building of 2 more station's.
Orbital and Deep Space slot's: Orbital slots are for station's to be built in orbit of a planet, and can defend only the planet, and will not count as defence when fleet's/player's are attacked, Deep Space slots are were fleets are stationed and player's go to, they will not defend planet's but will defend fleet's/player's, fleets do not count in slot's and will defend werever they are needed.
5.Designing/Upgrading
Designing is all well and good, but for people who don't have gold/are always making new designs there are a few features that could be added to make designing more efficient and quicker
How about a new design section, something like “prebuilt” as you can see I can't really think of a name for it right now, but basically it would be a lot of system's merged into a simple one click installs all design.
System swap: As the name suggests, it allows you to swap around system's, without going through the whole edit/view, sell, upgrade, select fleet and system type, upgrade process, which lets face it is kinda long.
Sorry most of these are repeats of my last one's, but I want people to build upon and add to these idea's so emi has little work to do
If you wish to have your idea's added, just post them and I will add them, if you want to remain anonymous, PM me and I will just put by Mr. X
Update 11/12/08: Space Command Center, Under structure's, structure idea by lalelulilo, original suggestion Jessiedog.
Update 11/12/08: Orbital and Deep Space slot's, idea by lalelulilo, Update for System slots.
