I almost necro'd a thread in the spoilers section to post this.
I'm having a lot of fun with aurora, and have only scratched the surface.
The economic model however, is classic human. Build factories mines and shipping.
What about a fundamentally different type of empire? The swarm, as I read, create wrecks, which they use to reproduce as I understand it. This is different Playing that race or another race that uses planets and produces forces in fundamentally different ways would be really interesting. Beyond typical factory-building races.
One race concept I've always loved is the interplanetary plant. Seed planets from orbit, grow an immense organism that utilizes the planets resources and energy, and reproduce.
Requires water and can only live in planets orbiting certain stars. The player must instruct the plant to expend energy to produce terraforming buds. Once the plant advances enough (i suppose you would spend bio currency of some sort to expand your plants) you can start producing fruits, seeds, and nuts. Fruits are your commercial craft, seeds are used to populate new worlds, and nuts are your offensive ships. Just as plants grow toward the light, the plant can see all jump points if within some certain radius of them.
When seeds land on a populated planet, it kicks off defense mechanisms-- poisioning the planet slowly, but it acts like a ground unit and can be defeated by ground forces.
Technology is directed evolution.
Heck, even as a swarm-like, such races would be fascinating to play and play against.
