perhaps some change in mineral usage. when you get near 20 colonies at times your first ones start running out and it
becomes harder and harder to expand or solidify your current position if there is not a abundance of minerals. Of course
you can always SM them (does the AI create them for its NP so they don't have to mine?). Perhaps less (alot) on minerals
used in maintenance and more dependence on creating maintenance supplies.
One of the major elements of the game is managing your mineral resources. Early on, unless you get very lucky, you will have to make decisions about where to allocate those resources. That pressure on resources is also one of the reasons for expansion to other systems. If resources were easily available, it would remove a large part of the challenge of the game.
That I understand.... thats strategy gaming 101. My intent was to point out this game can only be played to the limit you can access adequate minerals. Once you pass that you will be in
a slow spiral down having to scrap items to free up minerals. Eventually all empires will fall from using up all available minerals. I am 30 years into the game and Earth is out. There probably would not be a game of 60-75 years as I could not mine enough within my empire to continue to support it. I am thrifty with my minerals but just putting 8 BCs into the game with supports is eating up minerals to just support them and their maintenance.
My point is. One is that maintenance supply should go more for any constructs than just plain minerals. The production and movement of adequate maintenance supply becomes
therefore as important as ordinance supply. You pay for maintenance supply and for maintenance minerals with the latter should be reduced to minimal and the effort put into building a system to process and create maintenance supplies. Another point is that as far as I can see you could never really expect to have dozens of capital ships in an empire because of the raw material shortage that will only continue to get worse past a certain time. The curve in supply and demand of minerals will rise slowly but descend quickly, I think faster than many can expand their empires. I am doing darn good in my current game so minerals is not a problem tho it is tying up alot of shipping for support.
I would suggest a Sorium scoop (Ramscoop) that can be built into any ship and be used to skim gas giants and produce a limited amount of fuel per hour used. In some manner building
a mobile Sorium gatherer with a super-scoop and refining ship for a fleet to be more mobile. I have seen this in quite a number of novels.
Second would be an increase in the amount of minerals obtained by level of mining. More useful amounts out of raw material by more careful mining and refining for less wastage. A special 'deep mining' facility that would be able to increase mineral mining on .1 planets making them more useful. Larger than a regular mine it may take up to 250,000 tons of transport per unit but would allow more access to hard to obtain quantities and better refining than a regular mine bringing all minerals to at least a .2 or .3 across the board for each facility.
The finite amount of minearls drives the game and you begin knowing your empire will not be a 1,000 year one but would slip back into pre-interstellar status. Sorry about being long winded.