OKay,
Im posting this to quickly list a few things i believe could easily be incorporated into a patch or next micro exp that would greatly improve the playing experience through immersion, im not so much talking about extra races or ships but minor things that can affect your attachment to your own individual game in a big way...... if you have some post as well,
1. Ability to also Name and select insignia for Fleets.(who doen't love the personal touch) Also to name starbases.
2. Have AI missions that make sense and are in the context of whats happening, instead of just destory and give me resource demands.
3. Change the research method, make research stations cost less logistic slots, or prehaps to unlock the research tree its not about how many stations you have but instead how many developed worlds you have,or military research is opened up by how many engagements you have survived. the goal of this is to free up slots for refineries, cultural influence, trade posts etc. it starts to bug me that my first few planets are full of research station both civ and mil, then later im going back and scuttling stations to build different logstics. Maybe you only need to build research stations later on to unlock the super wicked abilites and ships.........
4. Actually making a planet siege an actual siege, in that it takes a length of time, so as if you have lost a system you have time to try to take it back, and if the enemy just obliterate it, it comes at a cost such as re population taking a very long time so they have to sit out and defend their colony frigates or the effect and spread of their influnce is penelized for all their murder.
These are just it for now, the jist of what im getting at is to mix up the gameplay a bit because patterns are nice but are hard to break and become repetitive, the game has so many wonderful units and different ways of accomplishing things its a crime to not fully utilize them.If you also can think of anything along these lines please add, its nice to dream.