So its early Fall. I want to do a bit of theory crafting on Gal Civ III's next big expansion set to arrive next spring in 2017. Now all of this is PURE SPECULATION but its just a few thoughts on things I have picked up from some of Frogboys posts. 

This thread is just to speculate and see what the community thinks may be in the up coming 'stand alone' expansion. With that said I think the following are likely to happen:

• An end to all individual planetary adjustments. There will be no wheel, nothing. All Production/Research/Economy changes will be done on the Empire level. If your planet is +50% econo you specialize by building economy buildings there. Same with Research. I feel that the wheel was a great idea for the sake of change but its not as intuitive as Gal Civ II's sliders. Set your sliders to 50 research, 25 production, 25 economy and  you are DONE with Micro management! 
• Why would this be done? Well for one it GREATLY eliminates micro on a per planet basis. Set it via Govern screen and change it as needed to accommodate wartime or peace. Also this will significantly improve how the ai manages its planets. The (ai) and the player will be on somewhat even footing. Now the edge the player can gain is how it builds its ships and organizes its fleets <along> with how it builds out its planets. I suspect it will also make how the ai builds its planets out better than it is now. 
• With this change I also think both Happiness and Economy will have a drastic change. I would like both of these used as braking mechanisms to either expansion or unrestricted growth. Happiness to slow down individual planetary population growth and economy to limit empire wide expansion (until your newly settled planets get more established). Again this was done in GCII and it worked. I know many here hated it but you got to admit there was a point in early to mid game where I could do nothing except click 'next turn' only so I can get my existing planets some economy going. 
• I think we will get Admirals for our ships. How can this be done? Simply make the admirals a ship component that can be removed at a shipyard (a feature they have to build into the existing game) While this is prolly  not going to happen it would be a nice thought. I am  happy with Horemvores ship components, they seem to do the same kind of job. Still I'd like the ability to re assign such (admirals) to fleets if a fleet is in orbit at a planet or shipyard or star base. 
• I would love to see more Pirate interaction! Its entirely possible that with the change to production we may get a nice follow up Pirate faction DLC which allows us to treat pirates as a minor faction. The would get assigned various names, have a research tree and be allowed to do various diplomacy jobs like interdict other empires ships, disrupt trade (you get a % of the revenue if done) and buying off said pirates to leave you alone. All of these great things come at the cost of your good reputation in the diplomacy screen. 
• Also possibly coming to Crusade may be a return of the Drath or the Korx. While we see both now it is entirely possible that we will see these both return as majors! I am Always for more Star dock crafted factions. While we add them can we please fix the string text limit that is crashing various mods from having many custom factions? <<<< This should be fixed long before Crusades though.