The focus of SiS?

[enpi]

Somewhere I read about you intention that SiS should emphasize the movement/combat aspect of 4x and not so much the diplomacy/spying/economical aspect. Is this is still correct, then I would suggest to introduce a logistic element.

logistic ships
-ships with ammunition supply modules which share their payload automatically between the missile/kinetic ships of the fleet in the same star system
-mobile refuel ships which can enhance the reach of a fleet beyond the usual range
-mobile repair ships which can repair damaged fleet modules and hit points after combat without the presence of a starbase
-spying ships/stations which have the possibility to spy the movement of enemy fleets in nearby systems beyond the usual sensor limit.
-ships with ECM jamming equipment which makes own ships harder to hit/boost own hit percentages of all own ships in a certain range on the battlemap.
-ships which generate fields which can impede enemy movement/boost own movement.

privateer subsystem
For another layer I would also suggest an abstract freighter/privateer subsystem based on the current freighter trade pool system. This means that you can send small to medium warships/privateers to the freighter pool to hunt down and plunder/kill enemy freighters from empires you are at war with. Additionally you could also send escort ships to the freighter pool to protect your trade fleet from enemy privateers.

The whole subsystem should be abstract and automated combat and not played out on the battle board. Instead you should rather get each round some regular status reports how the privateer war is going on. (eg: Turn 87: Privateer ship Sir John Drake destroyed 3 phidi freighters for +30 gold, privateer ship Black Skull was damaged for 53 hull points. Should it return to starbase on capella? y/n"; escort ship Shield Maiden destroyed 2 phidi privateers.)

[sven]

Many of these things are features that Arioch and I have discussed in the past. A privateer / foreign trade system, in particular, is one feature that I'm quite excited about, though it's unclear whether or not we'll have time to get it into the release version of the game.

There's a collection of ideas around strategic fleet motion that I'd also like to explore more. In MOO2, it was possible to build a hyperspace disruption device on your colony worlds, which dramatically increased the travel time of enemy ships headed towards your worlds. That's another tech that's long been on my list of "interesting abilities to hand out as a racial special".

More generally, I'd like to do a lot more playing around with specials that can change the rate at which fleets move from system to system. The current Stargate tech is one example of this -- it just reduces the motion time from one star in your empire to another to 1 turn. But, that's just one of many strategic motion changing abilities that we could include in the game - and it's worth noting that the Stargate tech itself is slated to change fairly soon as well -- in the not too distant future, using Stargates should involve building actual orbital Stargates