I really liked being able to subsidize civilian corporations as I enjoyed having a significant civilian sector. I hope it will return, my suggestion is related to that. Generally speaking I would enjoy seeing a more active and civilian sector able to handle various tasks automatically.
Suggestion: ability to subsidize the creation of civilian mining colonies.
One way would be to pay a given cost to have on created on a body immediately, but that might be too powerfull, instead I suggest that the player should be able to select a body in the system view screen and put a chosen amount of wealth on that body (without creating a colony or anything). This then affects the chance of a mining colony being established on the body, giving it a bonus depending on the wealth placed there. The player can add and remove the wealth as they please, but when a civilian colony is created that money disappears as it is paid out to the mining corporation established. Similarly, one could consider being able to subsidize the expansion of mining colonies in a similar manner.
Suggestion: Civilian whatever
Generally speaking, there is a high level of entry to this game, and there is also people who enjoy them. To ease that and enable people to focus on parts they prefer, and also making larger empire management easier, make automated civilian solutions a thing so people can select what aspects they want to personally solve and work on and what they want the game to take care of. It should not be too difficult as there is already a basis for it in the game, with how civilian mining colonies are created with armies, and you can generate ship design and armies at game start. To expand:
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Civilian security/Private armiesSimply like the armies generated for the mining colonies, a player can elect, for a wealth cost, to have civilian armies generated on the planet to take care of defending the planet and policing it. Of course, they are not so finely tuned as a player designed army could be, but at least you don't have to learn the system in its entirety to make viable armies. In the simplest form it could be a checkbox at the beginning in the game that decide for the entire empire that you can uncheck at any time, a checkbox for each colony under the ground units that decide if has a private army.
The exact details of balancing it of course needs to be tested. Fx, the armies don't just appear or disappear immediately but take some time to do so and while costing wealth to simulate time to hire/train/transport individuals. Perhaps there would be some mineral requirements. They player could let the game completely generate armies on their own, or you could give them an option to decide certain aspect on their own like, size, police strength, what they should be able to defend against, etc.
Or perhaps more simple, private security companies could generate various armies of different sizes according to colony size. Possibly then you could ship private armies from populated colonies to unpopulated colonies if necessary.
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Civilian FleetsSimilarly civilian fleets could be generated tough likely with both wealth and mineral costs. The level of control the player have needs to be balanced, either by selection on game start, trough science or the same. Furthermore, how much the player can control the design and at what granularity would have to be figured out, but basically its so new players can have the option of just generating fleets that work more like NPR fleets that works for the player. However, it can enable roleplaying and give the ability for the player to design empires with more interesting government types. An interesting consequence would be that privateer fleets could be generated, basically independent fleets, with no or little colonies, that can be given letters of marquee to raid enemies of civilisations. Or just good old pirate ships
Tough, of course, a checkbox to generate such things or should be there at game creation like the spawning of civilian fuel harvesters.
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Civilian defence bases (or rather, civilian PPV)More or less extension of the previous suggestion, but limited to creating fleets for defensive purposes of a planet/system to fulfil PPV. So probably just bases of various kinds.
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Civilian designed shipsAgain to make things easier for new players who wants to make their own fleet, but not yet delve into designing ships, this is more of a functionally thing, they can have ship design be automatically generate classes of ships with current technology. And again, at various level of granularity ranging from, generate cruiser, to ant-ship destroyer to more exact specification like ship size, engangement range and so on.
- Civilian racial tech
I remembered I made a similar suggestion once, so I found the link here:
http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=9630.msg103714#msg103714 -
Investing in Civilian companiesThis more for roleplaying sake than anything, let be able to buy stocks in the companies. Owning a company completely would give you all of its profits, and costs. This way, players with communist civilisation could use the system, but not have it conflict with their roleplaying. Then its more civilian iniatives rather than companies.
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Civilian government of planetsThe idea for me at first was roleplay, its a common trope for galactic civilisations to have planets sold or governed by private companies. So you could offload various responsibilities to a civilian government, ranging from specific responsibilities like constructions to everything like armies, PPV fleets and so on. You could set various targets for them to meet at various level of granularity, say, pop size, construction ability and so on and they will try to meet them with the recourses available. One could expand this to also be defined on a system and sector basis
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Subject EmpiresAt this point if you have entire, planets systems and sectors be civilian controlled with civilian armies and fleets, you are reaching a point where they are basically non-player vasal empires. So why not give the player ability to make them independed actual vasals empires if they so choose. The level of independence could of course be defined of various level of granularity, from near independed paying a tite of wealth and minerals possibly, to near integrated where they player can direct colonies, armies and fleets more or less as they please. This would also allow you to concur enemy races as have them become vasals instead of being completely destroyed.
