Here are another two ideas in my hopefully limpid series.
3. Change fleet supply costs from a crippling double taxation to an actual maintenance cost.
With the current fleet supply cost a fixed percentage of your income, rebuilding a big fleet can be difficult after a loss. Even though your current fleet supply usage is only 100, you are paying for 2000 supply with a crushing 75% tax burden. I understand that fleet supply is designed to keep powerful players from becoming too powerful, but sometimes it feels too punitive. Fleet supply would work better if it was a fixed cost per unit supply (with the same upgrades to increase max supply as the current system). For example, a 1000 supply fleet could cost 50 credits, 10 metal and crystal per second, but after you lose it your costs also decrease. (If your economy can not support this rate and you run out of money in the bank, you might not be able to build any more ships, and passive regeneration could be disabled until your income can support your fleet again.)
The double taxation I mentioned is also a real drag when colonizing planets more than 5 or 6 jumps away from your capital. A nominal metal extractor of .69/second or whatever is only giving .3105 because of 45% allegiance. You then are taxed at 66% for a final income of about .103 per second. this is about 15% of the original income. It does not even feel like it is worth it to invest in these planets! The above change would also help this problem.
4. Implement a more exciting "fog of war."
The current fog of war implementation is very simple. Any ship in a gravity well will provide vision to the entire well. Also, there is no stealth, and even mines are just "invulnerable." Adding layers of stealth might improve the gameplay, but I am not so sure about this one. Let me explain that there could possibly be different levels of "stealthyness." A mine would be totally invisible unless detected by specialized sensor ships (i.e., scouts in the current game). Some frigates could have enough stealth rating to hide on the far side of a planet or in a dust cloud if more than X distance away from normal enemy ships with only basic sensors. Maybe the shattered moon or asteroid field will now hold opportunities to play hide and seek with the intelligence gathering forces of your enemy!
Anyway, just some ideas for the devs.
Here is the link to Part 1