Frogboy, what do you think of my idea for letting players join games? It isn't technically a 'drop-in' feature, as in other games like WiC. Do you think it would work?

If you re-read, I negated myself

I was basing my comment on the fact that you can't do that with desyncs, then I realized that the reason you can't do that with desyncs is there's no way to tell who was right / wrong, and worse yet if it happens once, it's almost certain to happen again.

That's for the semi-random generation, right?  Not using the map editor?

At the moment, they're using an indirect method to connect fleet size to population.

Maintenance was discarded back in beta 1, because it wasn't fun to play.  They implemented planet-based fleet points, then decided that that didn't work -- it made it too hard to 'bounce back' from loosing a planet (i. e. increases steamrolling).  So they moved to the current system, where your resource base indirectly determines your maximum fleet cap.  As you increase your fleet cap size, the resource drain increases, and if it gets too high, you're economy stalls out.  Sure, you can have 2000 points worth of ships, but you can't actually buy anything new from that point on kind of thing.

If I recall correctly:

1st Expansion = Defense (Entrenchment)

2nd Expansion = Diplomacy (Make friends, influence people... then gank them with your other buddies)

3rd Expansion seems to be airy fairy but I'm sure I read something, somewhere that it'd be single player focused.  But don't quote me.

I'd agree with Frogboy: Diplomacy.

In particular, do something about those one-sided missions AIs like to give you.

• I'd like to be able to give the AIs missions as well.
• Sometimes it's annoying when they give you missions against a specific enemy, but you've got bigger fish to fry and don't have the resources. It would be nice to make a counter-proposal or even outright say "no."
  

My opinion? Revamp the mission system. Make it two sided, so we can do to the AIs as they do to us. Perhaps make the missions less specific and more sensible.

Either that or get rid of it? I'm not entirely sure I see the point of it. Perhaps other parts of the game should control how much they like/dislike you. Something along the lines of the Civilization games, perhaps?

How about a last man standing style game option featuring the Vasari's mysterious enemy?  After a certain amount of time (player determined or random) their fleets appear at each player's respective homeworld and proceed to anihilate everything planet-by-planet.  Players would be forced to expand outwards to escape the invaders and accelerate the destruction of their opponents, or construct elaborate defensive positions to try and delay their inevitable end, and fight off any players who try the first option.  Last empire remaining obviously wins (kind of).

I can also see fun being had by capturing a planet within enemy lines and setting that as your home planet just before the invasions begin.

I would like to see Bio Weapons. In real life, miltaries research these types of weapons all the time because it's cheap and effective. Let's say the TEC have developed a virus that halts the culture spread of the Advent. So in turn, the Advent would have to research a cure. The use of bio weapons would be nice step from just dropping bombs on a planet. Maybe there are levels of bio weapons from ones that slow the growth of your planet to the level of a super weapon.

My opinion is that the next expansion will be either one of two things

1. Offensive

or

2. Culture

in my mind nothing else would really make sense.  and then even out of those 2 my money is on Culture.  and i saw on G4 a way long time ago back when they were still designing Entrenchment that the next expansion was going to be more or less economy/ Culture based.  now of course this could be totally wrong as i dont have the best memory in the world but i think thats what it is and where my money lies.

hmm I guess, since both sides just digs in, but then again, each are just as afraid of the other attacking, yet don't want to attack themselves, that I think is sorta like WWII

How frequent are these expansion packs going to be? Every other month? Once a year?

well, if you look at it logically, entrenchment 1 1/2 - 2 months in beta, give or take. combine that with the work necessary to actually get to beta, throw in the original schedule of 1st in mid november, 2nd in feb/ mar, 3rd in early summer, and you should have some kind of educated guess. so, for me, a six month period seems a reasonable estimate. but then we don't know how much work is already done for the others. could be that the delay saw some effort on them too.

I think this is one of the major things missing from Sins as well, but it is expensive to do for a 10$ expansion. However, I have a suggestion as to how this could be done:

Consider how Valve handles Team Fortress 2 maps: as the community makes popular and well done maps, they polish and 'cannonize' them, making them official maps.

IC could do something similar to get a campaign into Sins. Add scripting support and hold a contest. Select the best campaigns, merge as necessary. Polish, and voice. Bake at 350 till brown.