1.  Completely redo the economic system.  The name "colony" sort of implies some independence, and the whole system of sliders and insta-building really trashes that illusion.

2.  Streamline the technology tree.  If you're going to have seventeen levels of the same thing, just make it one box and update the version numbers. 

3.  I think it would be cool to separate technology into two separate parts:  Research and Development.  The "Research" is basic research into various fields, like physics, chemistry, biology, etc.  And it's pretty unpredictable with a variable progression path - so you can strive in a certain direction, but you never know what breakthrough you'll get next, or when it will come.  "Development" is more straightforward - prototyping new propulsion systems, weapons, buildings, etc.  But which options open up will depend on whether you've researched the proper element.  This would make each game develop differently.  There should always be surprises on the road to the future.

4.  Put some more work into the icons.  Sure, the spaceship graphics are cute as all heck, but I'm more interested in the GAME part of the game.  Make more types of icons so you can tell what's going on when zoomed out.  Add arrows to indicate direction and speed.

5.  This may sound weird, but I wish there were FEWER options when you start a game.  It's really tough to discuss strategies when everyone is really playing under a completely different set of parameters.

everything. this game is great, but there's so much more to get in. space is a big place full of interesting stuff

personally, i'd like to make the game a little smaller in scale - fewer planets but more interesting and more to do with them. when you think of all the different kinds of stuff there could be out there - habitable moons, binary star systems, binary planets, rogue planets, volcanic planets, planets in solar syncronous orbits - and all the cool scenarios sci fi writers have come up with (cloud city, kashykk, etc) it seems a bit sad to whittle it all down to one number for planet quality and a randomly generated image.

i'd like GC3 to have more atmosphere and put some of the wonder back into space exploration. not just the planets, but i'd like there to be more stuff going on in space (if anyone remembers alpha centauri, i'm thinking of the geological features you could find) for example, a region of the galaxy that was highly radioactive due to the collapse of a neutron star, or a huge solar system sized asteroid belt, aliens that swim through space and attack your ship, or stasrs exploding mid game.

i would like less ridiculous stuff like gems-floating-in-space as resources and aliens that look like squirrels. i would like more atmosphere, so that when my civilization is beset on all sides it means more to me.

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 Wow, most of those are great ideas. I especially liked the one about managing taxes on a planet by planet basis.

Damage Degradation: a medium hull ship starting a battle with 20 hp but ending the battle with 4 hp has the same amount of guns and speed as at the start of the battle. The ship should be limping away from battle, possibly with an escort as they can't effectively protect themselves anymore due to battle damage taking out some of its weapons

Random Unknown Opponent Personalities: The Drengin are the Drengin are the Drengin. Every time I play. How about not knowing a races personality until you spend some time dealing with them or another race that tells you about them. They wouldn't lie to you, would they?

Negotiation before UNP Votes: When there is a vote which will benefit one race (placement of a UNP facility, etc.), it would be nice to be able to negotiate to find out how others are going to vote and either convince them to vote a certain way or let them buy your vote to make it go their way.

Here it is:

Each race can move to sponsor a resolution. They are can either by written using an in-game editor (it would be pretty basic: just a few check boxes for things like nutral ground and number sliders for things like war tax and starbase module limits) or chosen from a set of them that the game makes depending on situations.

Then, you get to hail each of the races and try to get them to sign the resolutions (you can trade stuff: both the regular diplo screen stuff AND changes to the resolution [those only if you have no races on board] to get them to accept). If you can get X number of races (I'm thinking 50%) onboard, it goes to a vote.

In the vote, the races vote with each race recieving votes based on population. The current influence trading will be scrapped in place of trading the actual IPs that make planets culture-flip. If a resolution gets 50% of the vote, it passes. Each resolution gets voted on individually.

I am invisioning this process actually taking multiple turns. You create resolutions and submit them on turn 1, then three or four turns pass, then you vote. In that time, you get two other diplo items to trade with other races: Vote "Yes" on [resolution that you select from a drop-down menu], and Vote "No" on [resolution that you select from a drop-down menu]. Obviously, if you get a race to agree to either of these, they will vote in that way. If you agree to one, you get to see how the others vote, but you cannot choose which way you vote (becuse it has been predeternmined).

Maybe have the option (both for you, and the AI) to vote against your promise, but take a hefty diplo penalty with all races, and a bigger one with the one you cheated. This also decreases the in-game value of your promise a fair degree.

The only had thing I forsee in this proposal is getting the AI to value resolutions and decide if it likes them or not, and how much. But I'm sure that if it can be done, Brad can do it.

I like the idea posted above about having a pure research tree and a development tree.  Kinda different, and cool.  SO not only would the experience change depending on the race you choose, but also each individual game would be different as the tech options would have a randomness factor.  Kinda like Sword of the Stars, but I'd like to see even more randomness than they have.  I have to keep thinking of how it was done in Master of Orion 2.  I enjoyed that model, though mutual exclusion really bothers some players as it doesn't really make much sense....

The tech trees should just stop.  When you get to the end, and don't have tech victory turned on, you should be able to continue to research improvements in a specific thread.  These improvements can be slight bumps in miniaturation, damage/armor, etc.  Just having it stop is kinda annoying, least to me.

I'd like to see the ability to make refinements to techs.  Again, I'm looking at Master of Orion 2.  I liked that instead of having to move from lasers to some other type of beam, you could spend research making your lasers better.  Gattling lasers, long range focused lasers, point defense lasers, etc.  So you could improve what you have rather than having to jump to a new type of tech.  I liked that.

Most of all, I'd like combat to be revamped.  Allow us to target specific ships and ship systems.  Let us give the fleets tactical orders.  DOn't make us micromanage all the ships.  I like that GalCiv2 combat has the feel of a fleet admiral watching the battle on a view screen.  Let the individual ship captains control their ships and attempt to follow orders to the best of their ability.  Let the captains gain experience too.  Ships could start with stock standard, level 0 captains.  Then as they gain experience they could add bonuses to their ships.  Eventually, if they survive and continue to gain experience, they could grant bonuses to the fleet they are a part of.  That could be a LOT of fun.

Planetary invasion....   The GalCiv 2 model was never finished.  In fact, to be honest, I liked the original over what was eventually implemented.  I'd like to see a map overview that shows the planet in sectors.  Then we could watch the progression of our invasion on the map.  Let us order our troops to focus on specific sector and make the sectors mean something.  For instance there could be a spaceport in one sector and a power generator in another.  Add some ground based techs like shields and fortifications with a list of options. Make it interesting and interactive.  On the same screen I'd like to see some graphical representation of the troops fighting.  I want to see the troops on both sides using whatever tech they currently employ.  So that's lots of pretty colored light shows and various types of combat vehicles.  Given that we have so many different races and so many different types of tech that could make for a lot of work, but it would be worth it.  Make us look forward to watching ground combat.  Let us interact with what's going on a bit, and make it visually appealing.  Let us watch the results of picking a strategy type like orbital bombardment.  Above all, make it interesting and most of all....don't make it repetitive.

Other than these, I guess all I'd like to see are more techs, more random events, and maybe a new race or too???  The story line is already awesome...so just give us more of the same as far as that goes. 

Edit: Oh, and Kopema said he'd like fewer starting options.  I'm on the other end of the fence.  I'd like more, but these options could be moved so there are just a few on the main page and an Advanced screen could offer those like me all the options we want.  Just please, put in mouse over tooltips that explain what the options do. 

I would like to see, Starbases that could be military fortreses like death stars.With wepons and sheilds and be able to destroy planets instead of stars,you know a ship like starbase.with moduals for everything.

There's a really easy solution to this that Master of Orion 2 figured out 14 years ago: a checkbox in the game options that lets you choose whether you want tactical combat or not.
Clearly it can't be that hard or else that game wouldn't have fit on a fraction of a CD...

I, for one, do want tactical combat in some situations and want to leave it up to the AI in others.

Mac OS X support! 

there's a lot of interesting technologies for programmers in the new snow leopard, including easy multicore support and OpenCL.  and i would love to be able to play it as a native app instead of dual booting (or not playing at all...) 

oh please please please?

Actually, implementation of a real-time control system into tactical combat would take an awful lot of work.

Personally though I don't need that.  I would settle for a system that let "tactical" skill have an effect on the damage distribution system.  This should be pretty easy to implement, and wouldn't require any individual ship AI.

As the system is now, The ships can target any opponent they want, so they always target the ship with the highest attack/defense ratio, and then go to the next in line.  And the only effect ship "experience" and civilization tactical skills have is add hitpoints.  What that means is that the ship with the most experience drops to the bottom of the enemy's attack que - so all it does is keep itself alive, at the expense of its fleetmates.  That's never a good strategy for group survival, and in the long term, it's even a bad strategy for individual survival.

I suggest the following:

1)  Go ahead and let ship's experience add to its hitpoints; that's fine, but also

2)  Add up each fleet's ship experience levels, along with any civilization tactical bonuses.  Then, during each attack phase, 'roll' a random value and add it to the attacker's tactical bonus, minus the defender's tactical bonus.

3)  If the adjusted attack success roll is above a certain level, then all attacks would do the same as now and focus on the 'best' target - i.e., the enemy ship with the highest attack/defense ratio.  But, at a slightly lower result, one attacking ship would randomly attack a different ship in the enemy fleet.  As the number dropped, more and more ships whould have to fire at random targets.  Then, if the attack value dropped even lower, one or more attackers would automatically fire at the WORST target (lowest attack/defense ratio) in the enemy fleet.

This system would reflect the ability to position ships in the most effective manner to preserve the vulnerable members of your own fleet, and at the same time coordinate targets optimally against the best targets among the enemy fleet.  If you're really good, you'll focus all your shots perfectly, while dancing around and suckering your opponent into attacking the worst possible targets.

Of course if you're sending corvettes against dreadnaughts, you'll still get wiped out no matter how good you are.  On the other hand, a comparably equipped but more skilled fleet will defeat the enemy in detail, gradually reducing their firepower while maintaining its own.