I personaly hope, galaxy will feel alive, and there will be a lot of things to explore, find and discover, not just at the beggining but thru the whole game, including alot of minor races, space monster, pirates and random events... Because discovery and exploration is my favorite part of 4X space games. I always can not wait to start again and see whats there for me this time.
I am hoping for some interesting mechanics and features for different races. Not only +1 to income. Or +1 to science etc... But things which fundamentaly change the way you play the game. I like to explore different races and strategies, and if the only difference are flat % bonuses and graphics, I am always bit sad.
I want alot of different mechanics and ways how to win the game. But at the same time, I want all of them to be connected and well executed. There is no point to go big, if features do not make any sense or do not play well or does not connect well with other features. Game must be executed well and gameplay mechanics must play together well.
Meaningfull choices and mechanics. I would like to see differences between weapons other then different number. In a way they work and having advantages and disadvantages. Same goes for colony development. Specialization which will force you to think about developing your colony, instead of only stacking flat bonuses or % from the beggining to the end.
RPG features for colonies and units. Being able to specialize or improve colonies with different bonuses, or level up units. So during the game I care about them more. You did it quiete well in Fallen Enchantress. Where you could specialize cities etc. Something like that but in sci fi fashion.
Space terrain, this is very often completely missing feature in space 4x games. Having different anomalies on the map, with effects and special resources, unique locations and artefacts to discover.
Good UI. All above would not be good, if game will not be running well and UI will not aid player. I know so many 4x games, which have bad UI and it makes great game, chore to play. UI must be fast, clean, helpfull, crisp and need to have advanced functions to be able find, sort, memorize, quickly access and compare things easily. Easy to understand tooltips and clever coloring of different atributes can help alot, to give you most important information at glance.
Performance. I remember elemental when it came out. It was running so bad on my PC that I have refused to play it. Please do not make same mistake again, and now when game is DX10-10 and 64bit. Make sure it scales well on faster machines. I have gaming computer and I would like to put it in use.
It must have MP same as single player.. Also, I would like to see game, where community or stardock would be able to create challenges for the players, where there would be set rules (map, race, victory type etc...) and game would give you score in the end which would go onto online leaderboard. You know, to have some competition and feeling that you actualy play againts other people when you do not
.
Mod Support for Single player and Multiplayers aswell.