Here's an idea I'm passing along that I rather like: Add custom "weights" for colonies, and just give the current location of the ship a bonus weight. If left at the default values they behave as they do now (population based iirc), but there's also a box to add a custom modifier amount that'll tweak its priority up or down. It could be useful, for example, to direct all shipping off the well-traveled routes to pick up equipment near the interstellar boundary. You could even add a multiplier to shipping cost based on the custom priority mod to simulate shipping route subsidization.
EDIT: I should mention that the above is for civilian shipping lines, so you can prioritize which worlds are being traded at.
Also, two other ideas:
- I know this has been mentioned before, but I'd *really* like a commercial hangar. Likely larger than a military hangar and unable to reload weapons.
- Maybe some sort of really, really pathetic civilian weapon system as commercial? Like, say, a minimum tech gauss cannon? It just strikes me as odd that no commercial ships can be armed in any way, shape or form. Or, just had a thought: Beam weapons more than, say, four tech levels behind par are commercial, signifying enough development time that they're solid, reliable units and old enough they're not considered a threat to the military.