Currently, all communication between ships/colonies/etc in Aurora is modelled as an effectively instantaneous process. How difficult would it be to add in a realistic time delay feature to account for the effects of the finite speed of light on radio communications? Below are some of my thoughts on possible implementation methods I've been brainstorming in my idle time. Take it or leave it as you may.
Firstly, it is important to define a standardized communication path between ships, colonies, and other game elements (such as buoys/satellites). Suppose I have a single colony (Earth) and a single ship in Earth orbit. The ship is placed in a fleet, lets assume it's a naval ship so its under a naval admin command which is ultimately answerable to a naval headquarters on Earth. I propose that whenever a player attempts to communicate with a ship, the player must do so via whatever naval headquarters the ship is assigned to. The naval headquarters would then relay the command to the applicable ship (possibly through a network of communication relay nodes). The existing fleet interface window would suffice from graphical point of view, but the important game mechanic change would be that as the ship becomes farther and farther away from it's assigned naval headquarters, it would respond to commands more slowly. Additionally, if the ship detected something interesting, say a hostile contact or a new mineral deposit, there would be a time delay between when the game engine registers this and the player receives notification from the naval headquarters. This communication time delay could be diminished via a researchable technology, say superluminal communications, which reduces (or possibly eliminates) the communication time delay.
As a follow up, it would be interesting if ships (and even colonies) had a limited effective communication range, rather than the effectively unlimited range they have now, and if they stray too far out of range they receive some sort of malus. This would provide the possibility of another interesting game mechanic in the form of communication relay satellites or dedicated command and control ships which could possibly also benefit from the aforementioned superluminal communications research option.
Together, the communication time delay and limited communication range would make naval headquarters facilities much more important than they are currently. With the mechanics described above, there would be a strong incentive to build naval headquarters facilities on many colonies in order to reduce communication time delay. In this system, it might even be sensible to allow a planet/colony/naval HQ to be designated as a higher level command HQ of some sort, with several sub-HQ's under it's prevue with improved communication links between them.
I think this sort of system would add some interesting player options. One would have to consider defending not only your lines of supply, but also your lines of communication, which may or may not be deployed in a similar fashion. Additionally, you could realistically cut off an enemies' lines of communication and then strike while their fleets are in disarray, perhaps experiencing something similar to jump-shock. This might even give a technologically inferior race a fighting chance against a superior foe. I'm thinking along the lines of how the initial Bugger invasion of Sol was stopped by the humans in Ender's Game (book). Additionally, the communication delay would place much more emphasis on conditional automatic fleet commands, as a fleet commander would be able to react immediately to a new contact but would not necessarily be able to report and receive new orders from central command for quite a while if the fleet is located very far from a naval HQ.
What are other peoples thoughts? There's definitely room for refinement on what I've posted here.
This entire comm delay/finite comm range concept could be added as an option item in the main game menu and be player toggleable, so it would not be necessary if not desired. Also, there should probably be an option somewhere to 'assume tactical command' of a fleet that so that the player can RP the fleet commander / ship captain role if so desired, as I suspect that is a major reason many people play Aurora.