-That should also include realistic Warhead strengths.
Nukes would deal more damage in Atmospheres, the thicker the more damage, but also be limited to the impact space, so no armor penetration, making mirvs more important.
-I think Jumpgates could actually still be possible, to accelerate Travel and have a specific destination. It would be the peak of technological development and allow a race to boost it's economy between any two systems, and thus consume enormous amounts of resources, and require a lot of development and planning.
Rare, natural wormholes could still be allowed, working like normal travel, but not requiring hyperdrives.
-If you have jump carriers, why not allow attachment on a wider scale, not only fuel canisters, but things like weapon platforms that can be detached, but only have limited batteries without the carrying ships generators.
-I think if your going to redo everything anyways, why not improve shipbuilding? One could, like in current commercial 4x games, put his ships together on a grid, (I think 3d grids would be too much) and decide what is more protection worthy and fragile and thus go inside. Most weapons would obviously have to be outside.
MIRVs should be able to have various bomblets, like flares, decoy missiles, and actual damage dealers, or maybe deploying small laser satellites, and armor piercing missiles that require energy weapon tech.
Shields could be specialized to specific damage distributions, a Bubbleshield would take more damage from missiles, but due to more covered space be more efficient versus beams, and maybe one could build Guard ships that protect multiple ships under a huge shield bubble.
Armor penetration could also factor that stuff in, if armor is hardened and coherent, maybe hits might deal less damage to it, but deep damage templates could deal more damage after penetrating the outer shell.
-Most important off all, wouldn't the combat distances be different? Currently, point blank range is 10k kilometers, I don't thing a nuke in open space would damage anything that that distance.-Also, you could revise engines, with a ship ship packing a high efficiency cruise engine for slow, but cheap flights, and a few additional overcharged engines for inefficient, but fast combat maneuvers. You could even have a weaker hyperflight, say, with only double speed, without a bonus to evasion, so you can have more refined flight and movement calculations in combat without having problems like in that other recent thread.
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Life simulation, Free O2 hints at natural wildlife, which might be dangerous, but could also be a factor of economy and tourism. Races might require water, toxic gases, or other stuff to survive (like we breath oxygen), or even radiation (if you think thats too far off, which it isn't, I guess increased modability might allow that).
-Populace sum; war always results in unrest, different economy types might result in quicker growth, but also the possibility of recession.
Genetic modifications might result in unrest, same as high unemployment.
- Conventional Materials. Those could be available in higher spread, and be required for the economy; given that ships calculate fuel and other stuff that is essentially also weight, players could build their ships partially from conventional materials to be cheaper and faster, but also a lot less durable.
-And finally make beam weapons do something versus atmosphere. it doesn't need to be much.
Edit: As for small things, more diplomacy maybe? feints? Intrigues? Reverse psychology?
*frenetic jubilation* well, whatever you do, it will quite possibly be great. I just hope I live to see the day X-D
Good luck, keep on making people waste their time.