So, hello! My first post. 
(and it will be a long one so grab some tea and a sandwich and I'll hope I'll interest you)
My english is a bit bad, but I'm here to state some opinions I've had over my gaming career!
So, Galciv 2, SPAZ(Space Pirates and Zombies) and Sword of the Stars are my favorite space games yet, and Total Annihilation is my favorite strategy game ever(hopefully this will be my new favorite game when it's released!).
But none of them where perfect in my mind, I often dreamt of making my own game and creating my own ideas(who hasn't?)
So, in short words.
I want research, I want real time battles, I want customizable units, I want balance, I want defense buildings and I want progression.
I want to be able to research weapons like blue laser and dumb rockets, I want to be able to build my ship how I like it(within certain limits/balance, sacrifizing offense for defense, or vice versa), I then want to see how my units fire blue lasers and rockets in a real time battle, and I then want to progress to the next level of the campaign and still have my research and my choices.
But.
Whenever I played Galciv2 or SotS I always had the same problem, there was no limit on how much you could research, and I didnt think it was fun to build units with blue lasers, and by the time they where done, I had a better version of the laser available and they became outdated, and by the time my already outdated units find the enemy I had progressed even further, so I always fortified myself to the max and just researched everything until I could make the best ships avalaible, and I didnt quite like it to have everything avalaible like that, cus the small battles with 5-10 low tech ships is just as fun as the big ones.
So here's what I've been thinking, set a limit to research.
I dont know how to implement it, but I have a couple of ideas.
You could make different "eras"(I think its called eras? well u get it :<) and different "game time modes" within one game.. or something, let me try to make an example instead. ;<
So lets say we've just started a game.
Now I have 40 turns of research to do, research is then locked for 30 turns(these numbers could be customizable) and I need to put the stuff I've researched into good use.
Someone researched 3 levels of lasers, having real strong laser offence, while I researched homing missiles, and someone else concentrated on maximizing his benefits for the next "era" (researching population growth, maybe shields for defense, research bonus etc)
This would make every tier of ship and weapon more useable, and I think it would make more of an interesting game.
lets say on a really small map, where players find themselves close to eachother at the start, combat would initiate quickly.
After the 1st research era, player 2 discovered that player 1 seems to have focused on lasers, which makes player 2 research defensive shields against lasers, while player 1 discovered player 2 had a lot of missile units, which makes him research countermeasures for that, a little rock paper scissors from era to era.
For each era the turns could change, like
1st era - 40 turns of research - 20 turns of lockdown.
2nd era - 30 turns of research - 20 turnsn of lockdown.
3rd era - 50 turns of research - 60 turns of lockdown.
well you get it.
You can of course sacrificing resources and fighting under the research eras - but then you'll risk getting underdeveloped:D
And in the campaign this also could work, as every mission could be 1 era. So in mission one you could have 20 turns of researched and then lockdown for the rest of the mission, and you would then take some or all of that research to the next mission, which have 50 turns before lockdown, etc etc, slowly progressin into the higher techs as you advance.
Well, that's some of my ideas, I hope I didnt waste your time!
