these are just a few things i came up with while playing this weekend

1) Cluster size control
right now we simply have tight and loose clusters what i would like to see is a drop down whenever one of these two options is selected that lists something like
small - ~ 10 stars,
medium - 10-20 stars
large - 20-30 stars
varied - different size cluster's
Random - one of the above settings

2) range control
right now there are default range sizes to the maps id like to see these as a selectable option when making a new game

3) planet sensors
currently all planets start with a small range and thats it for the rest of the game what i would like to see is an improvement that would increase a planets range by one. this would be unique to each planet and could be upgraded with sensor techs 

4) negative adjacency bonus's just to make things a little more interesting
factorys -1 to population tiles, and morale tiles

5) an add to top option for the improvements que or ship building que 
my shipyard is building 20 X Battlecruiser mk 10 and i just researched atmospheric cleansing that and can colonize that planet 2 tiles away. if i select add to top then build colony ship (shift click?) then it will be built next without having to go and drag the colony ship from the bottom of the list

6) an optimize build button this would be for planets after choosing all the building you want the optimize build button would place any buildings that give a bonus to production at the top of the list then buildings that give bonus to population followed by any other buildings that give bonus's then terraforming at the bottom

7) ultra terraformer 
something needs to change here my preferred fix would be to move UT down to a tech right after soil improvement but keep its cost high.
another fix might be to color code the tiles so i can tell at a glance what tiles can be terraformed with UT.

8) survey ship controls
auto survey checkboxes i want this ship to check for
wormholes  [ ]
space junk  [ ]
artifacts     [ ], etc etc

9) better exploration ai
when i get one of those ideology bonus's that give me a bunch of ships i will often just select auto explore and let them go this often leads to them bunching up and chasing the same unexplored territory if instead they had some kind of check that said
claim hex Radius equal to 5X ship's movement
no other auto explore ship will enter a claimed hex