I'm just wondering, and didn't happen across this while searching, but how feasible is it to implement a multiple player-per-civilization function/game mode? Maybe even in a future expansion as a game type.

For example, a friend of mine who enjoys managing economic & research aspects of the game over fleet combat focuses on developing planets and spending credits towards research. At the same time I'm able to build my fleets and use them on a front without having to worry too much about my economic status. To better manage who gets to use how much of what resource (since it's shared), we could have a slider bar that would automatically divvy up a percentage to each player's 'budget' and could easily transfer funds to each other's budget if something was needed (or simply do away with this and just have a shared bank).

The reason I'm suggesting this is because once you start playing the larger maps, the game focuses too much on macro management of planets and fleets mid to late-game and becomes impossible to efficiently micro individual fleets or even ships within them. Creating a game with this feature would allow a 4v4 game with just two races/teams combating each other over several systems, working together as a team to defeat the opposing team while handling different or shared roles. This results in something much more strategic endgame(imho). Players would be able to switch between assisting in combat roles to financial/economic development roles whenever they're needed. Granted, four players on one team may be too much, since some players could get confused as to who is controlling what, especially when multiple fleets clash, but there's probably a possible solution to that which could be relatively simple to implement (visual indicators of some sort).

Of course, you'd have to play this mode with people you're familiar with (or be very trusting of your allies), but this would create a whole new type of play-style and add new elements to the game, as well as players who may even specialize in particular aspects of the game. It could also help newer players get more active in the online community, since you could have games that grant one more experienced player on the team more responsibility (greater percentage of funds for more units to utilize).

This was something that I thought would be a great idea in SW:EaW, especially since battles would take place both on land and in space at the same time. I preferred playing planet-based combat, while most of my friends enjoyed the space-combat. Unfortunately, the game wasn't even nearly as great as SoaSE has already become.

So, anyone out there think this is a possibility? Or at least a good/neat idea that might appear in future real-time strategies?