This is from a different post where my suggestions weren't categorized as separate threads:

Expanding your growing empire and exploiting resources/planets is obviously a large part of gameplay. During my last game, it seemed like my empire was too...static. Other than the occasion trade ship zipping through explored empire controlled nodes, I felt like I was guarding a collection of planets with all of its citizenry were stuck on each planet or asteroid. I would love to see NPC controlled civilian ships that go about their business throughout your empire, but also require some sort of protection at one point or another. I would love to see my empire teeming with NPC controlled ships, just doing there own thing. I would feel like I was really protecting my empire, not a loose collection of planets.

When I built my first linked trade route, and I saw trade ships just going about their business, it felt like my empire was really budding. Don't get me wrong, those who want to focus merely on large scale battles should also be satisfied in SSE, but I would also love to see a visual representation of my empire growing, namely in ideas like these NPC controlled civilian ships.

In thinking about what other types of ships that could be added, I was thinking about leisure vessels, private crafts even maintenance ships. Who knows what else could work or be added. I think that some players out there will agree that adding additional civilian vessels would add a layer to the gameplay, and I know others won't (and that's totally cool, as in my last game I ordered all of my CapShips to attack a single enemy node, just to watch the destruction and cool battle sequence).

I'm curious what others think about this type of idea. I'm not talking about flooding planet wells with NPC ships, just the addition of some to add a lifelike feel to your planets.

Alongside this idea, the inclusion of extra civy ships would provide a good opportunity for enemies to infiltrate the space "traffic" to collect intel on enemies. To combat this could be an orbital structure "checkpoint" (think of them as truck weigh stations) that do random scans on ships to check for these types of embedded trade/civy ships. These would be useful near strategic, developed planets, and more sparse out in undefended nodes (to give the enemy a chance of successful infiltration) A tech could even increase chances of checkpoints picking up on an enemy, or reciprocal tech to increase chance of infiltration (Think Advent mind control...).

Just a couple of ideas to keep the ball rolling here!