Yea, I would like to be able to give ships, structures, etc. to my ally but I don't know how I'd feel about whole planets (the option would be fine I just doubt I'd use it).

For example, I'm allied with a Vasari player and I manage to Board a few Vasari ships, these ships don't get any bonuses from me but I could give them to my Vasari ally who would be able to apply all sorts of research upgrades to them.

Likewise, perhaps my Advent ally needs some extra crystal and I have two ice planets, I just give them the crystal extractors and hence their output (rather than having to constantly go and click the Give Crystal button).

The only problem is that, in my opinion, once I give my ally something (planets included) it isn't coming back my way so all that work I did on my planet could be rendered lost. Ideally I'd like the structures and tax income to have options to directly send it to certain players rather than give them things outright (especially if I have lots of income researches and my ally has gone full military). But I would like to be able to more effectively direct resources from production to allies.

I do like this. Make it a tier 7 research tech though.

I agree with Greg. Seeing's how the Novalith can one shot kill unupgraded planets I don't see a problem with Deliverance engine being able to do the same to outer worlds.

- Perhaps you could also make orbital greenhouses, which could boost population (at the cost of logistics slots) or maybe an orbital solar array which boosts production on the planet or maybe even an orbital fusion plant which yields even more power but which has a small chance of exploding.

- Temporal glitch. A fleet from the past enters the present. You've to protect them until you can send them back home, because if they are destroyed there could be dire temporal consequences to your empire. The more damage they've taken, the worse the consequences.

- Perhaps give an envoy an extra option to summon a small rebel fleet, at some cost of course. Just a few ships like the current neutral rebels, more for fun than usefulness.

- Let the act of relocating a capital (or losing a capital) cost you some relationship points with other races. At the moment, it affects allegiance on your own planets, but has no impact on other races, while it might add some realism if it did. For example, moving the capital closer to another race's capital could improve relations, while moving it further away could decrease relation. Or, moving your capital to a specific type of planet could have an impact, like a Volcano world might please the Vasari or a desert world might please the Advent. And if you decide to relocate to an asteroid for some mysterious reason ... I suppose there's no-one who'd respect someone who rules his empire from a barren rock...

- Mobile construction platform - to build military structures in enemy gravity wells (up to some maximum). Such a platform should be expensive, for example 300 fleet points and 3,000 credits or even more. And it shouldn't build too fast, otherwise it might be overpowered. It should be more for something "extra" than a game changer.

- Defensive formation - perhaps add something defensive, where heavily armored ships can shield lightly armored ships. For example by adding a "shield" command to a ship. It will then stay close to its shielding target and missiles/weapons that are intended for the target, but pass through the shielding ship, will be taken by the shielding ship.

- Space whales. You discover a domesticized colony of space whales. If you do proper research, you can use them in battle. You can't build them yourself, although they'll grow slowly in that colony, but you can use them (the adult ones) in your fleet. They don't do much damage, but can take a lot of damage. It should be something that's more for fun than usefulness so you can't have too many of them, maybe at most 10 at a time. And when you use them and they die, you'll also get some negative local allegiance bonus if you're Advent or TEC, and a positive allegiance bonus if you're Vasari. If you merely bring them to some colony and they don't die, they'll give some positive allegiance.

- extra shortcut keys, for example: alt+f = all fighters, alt+b=all bombers, alt+h=all heavy cruisers, alt+t=all torpedoe ships, alt+c=all carriers.

- temporary cease-fire inside a gravity well. Sometimes you would like to attack together on just 1 occasion, but you don't want the other temporary ally to gain access to all your planets and let him build starbases there. This could be useful on FFA.

- deserters. If your performance is really really bad and your income is very low, your troops will not be satisfied with 75% of small income, it's just not enough to pay their wages. They will desert you. This will also decrease your fleet cap and fleet upkeep cost.

- perhaps a map could contain 1 very special gravity well, which is so extremely hostile that it does continuous damage to ships. Small ships like frigates are especially vulnerable and may only survive for a few minutes. Capital ships however, are hardly affected. The planet in this system could be very profitable - and you can only conquer it by using capital ships.

- another disaster: rise of a prophet. On one of your colonies, a prophet is born and quickly gains popularity among the civilians. His cult is spreading quickly to nearby planets, lowering culture rate and culture sensitivity there.

- anonymous benefactor - a race that anonymously donates funds and/or ships to aid your cause. It would be nice if they aid the weakest faction. It shouldn't be any significant amount of course.... just a little. Like ... "a race that pities the pathetic situation you are in now has donated ### credits to aid your cause". Also, it would be nice if they aid the most aggressive faction, but not with resources... only with weapons, but not offense ... only for example a few guns for defense of a planet. Or the most peaceful faction, uhm, maybe give them a free envoy or something. It's more or less useless, but it could be a nice gesture. Uhm... and I suppose you should research "interstellar relations" first, to unlock such bonusses.

- I would also like to have 1 planet where I can build a big base. Right now the situation is like this: whether it's a capital planet or any other planet, you can build between 3 and 6 civilian structures and about 10 to 20 military structures. There is little variation and the game is more or less a countdown to how many planets you conquer and when the counter reaches 0 you win. What I would prefer is is that you gain more and more ground and finally you reach the enemy base and it's... well... huge.This could be achieved by having one "military capital" (which you cannot relocate) where you can add tactical slots over and over again (for example, every 10 minutes 1 slot is added) and where you can build a really big base. It's a place which will be really hard to conquer, even if the enemy has a small fleet. It's a place where a lot of credits have gone into during the game for a final heroic last stand.

Edit:

- And also extremely important: an option to have "team starts", that is, if you're playing a 5v5 game, players shouldn't be distributed at random, but make it a North versus South game or something. Not knowing where I end up on the map is a major, major put-off for me to play online. Preferably I would like something like this: there are 10 starting positions in a circle. When I'm the 3rd player in team 1, then I would end up on position 3. If I'm the 3rd player in team 2, then I would end up on position 8. If I'm the last player in team 2, then I end up on position 6, next to player 5 of team 1 who ends up on position 5. If I'm the first player of team 2, I end up on position 10, next to the first player of team 1 who ends up on position 1.

- To improve cooperation in multiplayer games, it'd be nice if allies could build factories in allied gravity wells. Also it would be nice if allies could build defensive structures in friendly gravity wells. For that purpose, they'll need a few construction frigates. This would make it easier to cooperate and increases mobility on a large map. 

- In order to create choke-points, give each player a structure that does the following to a phase lane: depletion of 25% antimatter on arrival and a reduction in speed by 50% for all ships, both friendly and enemy. This is not really useful by itself, but the enemy also has the possibility to build such a structure on the other end of the phase lane. If the enemy does so, it will completely block the phase lane in both directions. In this way, friend/enemy can work together to create a sort of border. Once the phase lane is blocked, there should be some serious penalty when either side is opened again. Something like a big explosion which destroys the colony and all structures present in the gravity well.

Edit.2

- Imo it would also be nice to have a civilian version of a starbase, which would be much cheaper, and has a limited sets of upgrades: a trade port, auxiliary government, a repair bay and a construction bay, and the civilian-type special upgrades as well, such as the 2nd level of cargo bays, colony pods leves 1,2, etc. It would be nice if you can have at least 4 such upgrades in such a starbase (preferably more).

I would also like ability based planet destruction (similar effect to the STTC but triggered through a buff)

I like the idea of events in solar systems. Like solar flares and ion storms. I also love the idea of finding unique capital ships or titans. Finding and restoring an ancient derelict ship or space station would be awesome. Or special worlds with super bonuses could be guarded by them. More cool and unique things like that would add a lot to maps.

However what sins badly needs is space monsters, to break up the pirates and militia. Sentient crystals, energy beings, hungry moons, and flame monsters from suns.

Formations that actually work would be good.
Some formations like Line, Box, Sphere, Delta and X would be cool too.

an 'Orbit fire' option would make battles look awesome. having a powerful broadside ship circle slowly around its target while firing would look epic.

I don't think formation would work too well. That would mean that ShipFormation would have to reworked. Because right now the formation is based on the class of the ships, which make sense. You have your attack ships in front, then your heavy hitters, then your support class ships. Then you have capital ships spaced out in between them.

I guess with the box formation you got:

attack ships in front line; heavy hitters on both sides, support backline, assault capital ship in front line, rest of the capital ships in behind.

Most of you if not all have surely played one of the different home-world games and are acquainted to the resource collection mechanism in the franchise.

As a Vasari Loyalist feature only, maybe even only applying to the evacuator and titan. An ability similar to that of the orbital refinery that would allow refinery ships to collect resources in adjacent gravity wells could be applied to the host ship.

I think this would totally fit the Vasari loyalist lore-wise and this idea would imo not be overpowered or difficult to implement.

Thanks for considering.

Actually, I think that this Overpowered Behemoth of Death Overwhelming of Awesomeness on the right here >> already fulfill the role of providing Trade Ports to the Vasari faction. Furthermore, their ships already have enough credits generating abilities.

What I am suggesting on the contrary is that their Evacuators and possibly Vorastra obtain an ability to spawn refinery ships that would collect metal and crystal on adjacent gravity wells. The ships would act as a mobile Orbital Refinery.

The only problem in implementing this idea that I can see is that the VL are already considered as an overpowered faction; and giving them even more strategic power might not be welcomed by the community. Still, I believe this would be great to see implemented.

Advent are human!

sareth01 and ZombiesRus5,

I like the idea of embassies... adding something new to address something old. I don't think a new dlc theme of 'diplomacy' is a good idea though (deja vu?). I would say make the theme starbases (although I might just have contradicted myself). Let's get a few new kinds and let embassies be one of them. 

The current starbases should be the more powerful and jack-of-all-trades. But imagine cheaper, less powerful starbases with more specific roles. For instance, a starbase for defense that allows the non-vasari races a mobility option at the cost of standard durability and special abilities. Maybe have a starbase that sits in the middle of a phaselane, interdicting ships? An offensive starbase that sets up quickly and offers some support, such as healing or bombardment (heck, maybe they carry a couple siege frigates that don't count against your supply).

Embassies would be another type of starbase. Maybe your way works better, but it might be easier to just model the diplomacy off of the trade system. You can build envoys, station them places and they give a boost (like it is now), but if you have an embassy, you can set envoys to automatically go between enemy planets and embassies, granting bigger gains in a manner similar to tradeports.

Finally, I would say add additional options. A simple bar similar to the game speed bar could make diplomacy more/less relevant which im sure will go over well with the different player types out there (mp probably won't care for diplomacy,  sp does). Another bar could determine pirate strength in a similar manner. More options like these can really help hone in on areas that need refinement.  For example, if all matches always have diplomacy set to max, that tells you that diplomacy probably isn't strong enough.