Spreadsheet-like views for managing colonies, starbases, ships and such. Sort of a combination of what was in GC2 & MOO2. In my last map, I had 175+ planets, 200+ starbases and countless numbers of ships. The side-bar is useful for monitoring & such, but isn't a robust management tool.
Double ++ for this. Heck, Triple +++ for this. Yes, the side bar is very handy. But having a separate (hopefully sortable) screen ala GC II is sorely needed. It give a great empire wide look at things that is really hard to do right now, especially if it is a sortable view. Plus being able to quickly manage shipyards from such a screen would cut down on the micromanaging tremendously, as I could go click click click click right down a field that I had already sorted into a way I liked.
Add a few + from me 
, though I doubt it will be done, on a dev stream Paul said nay to spreadsheets in games, but maybe some kind of compromise (at least for colony management). I understand Paul, a shooter with spreadsheets is not a good Idea, but an optional management screen of a turn based game hardly the same.
Ability to jump levels of improvement upgrades: e.g., basic factory to manufacturing plant (or what-ever) without needing to go through each & every step (I'm not sure if enabling the auto-upgrade will do this or not, but I'm looking for the ability to do so manually.)
Gonna be a hard fight on this one, as the devs don't seem to be leaning in that direction even though quite a few people are asking about it. But, yes, I've come around to the idea of letting people have the OPTION to jump several buildings if they have the production to do it.
Paul in one of the devstreams noted, quite correctly, that at the beginning of a colonies life, it is in fact faster to do it in the incremental steps. However, I think, especially on planets with lots of production, it stops being "quicker" once a planet has a decent number of factories on it.
So being given the choice to skip a step or three, with the default being incremental would be welcome as far as I am concerned.
And maybe it'll stop some of the complaints about production overflow. 
I had an idea on this quite some time ago, but I doubt they'll change the current behaviour at this stage of the dev cycle with any kind of weird/improved/better/whatever idea we could suggest, anyway:
The current logic is If I have the ability to make basic tools, then I can make better tools, refining the tools one level at a time. But what if I have enough capacity AND enough knowledge? Perhaps I know how to cut some corners, ignore unnecesary refinements, maybe I can skip a few levels (after all my basic tools will probably be better than a simple hammer)
New colonies must build some infrastructure first, so all colonies start with the most basic "Factory" building, but once a certain hammer threshold is achieved (tied to tech advancement), levels can be skipped.
So if my "Factory" tech level is "5", once I get say 15 hammers per turn on a new colony, I can skip one factory level (So instead of 1->2, I can do 1->3). Once I get to 40 hammers per turn, I can skip 2 levels
If my tech "Factory" level is "3", I need to get to 25 hammers per turn to skip one level (I have less knowledge, I need more "basic" tools)
Rinse and repeat untill I get max allowed level (quicker with enough production/tech)
However the "skip" part must be limited to one or levels (but more tech means less infrastructure required), otherwise is too unbalanced (screwdriver to nanites, doubtful, unless it's a Sonic screwdriver).
In GC2 I hated to wait for "Sector" factories on new planets, so I *almost* always ended up buying one to get the ball Rolling, this way I can get it Rolling faster...
Still, skipping levels means building with sub-optimal tools, so a small penalty should apply (+10%/+20% hammers needed for skip1/skip2)
