Here is a list of some Ideas (may or may not be realistic):
Gameplay
- Fleet follower - Enable the player to join major NPC fleets and be ordered what to do.
Advanced fighter AI - Improve the "Attack target" ability. When a player flies with this ability, it seems like he/she is the worst PVP flyer ever... so it can be assumed that NPC fighters do the same.
Ship Fuel - Force the player to follow fuel restrictions. Not having fuel while using space engines is a bit... unrealistic. Probably for hardcore gamers.
Non-sentient space beings - space beings that can be a threat to ships or factories that occur naturally in space. Most likely fueled by local suns and have internal chain organs to keep alive. It can get pretty boring fighting sentient beings. "Supprise!"
- Modular Ships - You can increase the size of your ship by adding on sections. (Cargo / Passenger / Power / turret sections) Ship parts can be bought while in a Space dock and have a hot key set for a GUI menu.
Missile class battleship - M2M ship with many missile ports (~60+), but very little shielding (1x2G), designed for taking out targets from a distance. Probably OP and will cause a lot of lag.
Station Transport Ship+ (TS+) - Extremely large TS that can carry at least 100000 units of Cargo. Probably best with a script that can build multiple stations at once. Has 5-10 ports for M3/M4/TS-class ships. Might also come pre-loaded with a jump-drive, because a TS is hard enough to fit through a gate without going "Pop".
Gale Magnetizer - Makes two+ ships (or stations) collide together within range.
War Ender - Super nuke, costs 13,000,000 each and takes up as much space as a space station. Has the ability to take out half of the sector in one fowl swoop.
Shield-Piercing weapons - "Very pointy sticks", weapons that are like javelins and can damage the hull directly by concentrating on a single point.
- Purity Transponder (Illegal) - makes a player appear to a race as friendly, but if the player's ship is scanned, the player can be attacked.
Repair Drones - Eve has something like this I think...
Re-usable Drones - Drones can re-dock with the player's ship to refuel after a bit of time.
Buffs - Why not have "Buffs" that can be created by buffing crew. Crew will be more efficient at certain things and the ship will become temporarily be better or worse. (Adrenaline shots for everybody! Spacefuel Consumption!)
- Dynamic Player Factories [XL-12mil, XXL-39mil, XXXL-120mil] - Tired of lugging that TS around everywhere and jumping to get rare stations? Of course you are! With modular factories, you can order new parts for your factory with less hassle and a LOT less lag. Each modular factory can be set up to do Multiple processes. For example: an XXL modular factory can do 30% Solar power plant, 30% silicon mining (must be near silicon-rich asteroid) and do 20% crystal fab, 20% Cahoona fac. It will produce the materials needed for XL factories at 15%, meaning that this would be a doubled factory chain. (4 XL-size factories) But only in one massive factory.
Cargo Space jump - logistically "Jump" cargo from Sector A to B by placing jump drives and energy cells onto a ship. This will statically link two stations together, but requires energy cells to keep going. This would make it possible to build a powerplant chain in one sector and use it to handle multiple other sectors with energy cells.
Loans and Private investors - Player can have NPCs lone some money or have investors invest in the player's economy empire.
Total badass license - Player can get upgraded if they get enough kills, M3->M4 and so on. For players that really aren't into logistics and just want to fight/kill... Though, the story line probably solves this, but what after the story line?
- Missile Turrets - Small turrets that use the laser towers as protection. They can fire on long-distance targets and use specified missiles. Can be beamed ammo from an Ammo Cache These can use any missile ammo type, as that is their purpose. However, larger ammo types have a "Cooldown" time to load the bigger missiles into the launch tubes.
Defense Projector S/M/L - can "Project" a shield over a region (aka, calculated objects within the field get a buff) Can be used on towers. (Or protect factories with Large projectors)
Modular Player Defenses - Like Large Weapons platforms, but A: owned by the player and B: can be modular. Modularity can give them more Ammo space, better shielding, ect. (thereby making them easier to hit, but who cares?) LWPs are too expensive, so this would help bridge the gap between Laser towers and MWPs and LWPs and even be able to defend a sector against 3+ capitols. (with 300m+ invested into modules)
C4 for astronauts - Want to do it real-army style? Want to get up close and stay in blind spots? Want to die a lot because the AI will probably target you? We have just the answer! Plant some C4 on the hulls of M1/M6/M7/M8 today! (Must have C4 in inventory with custom button assigned)
- Battle lag reducer - When a player is in battle, possibly halt most OOS activity to prevent lag. (if detected?)
SETA view reducer - When a player is in SETA, remove some ships, stations, effects (projectiles), ect from visibility to reduce lag.
Game Dev Optimizations = More sales
- Multi threading - Enable more then one CPU core to run scripts with. It seems that the game is only using one CPU core on my PC. This could be the reason for part of the in-game lag. Luckily, it seems that you aren't stuck with the Unity Engine, which seems to support only Single core CPUs. (If using C++, use BOOST libraries, C#: System.Threading)
PhysX (or opencl) - Enable people's graphics cards to do all of that nasty collision meshing.
Real-code Modding - Allow people to add mods in C++, lua or python to help improve game engine or modify lower-level things of the game. Minecraft did this very effectively... though, it wasn't intentional since people were able to decompile the java scripts. I believe that this could unlock a stronger, more personal GUI system and better custom content. (More sales, since custom content is awesome)
Storyline editor - Allow players to make new story arcs for different races and add new missions.
FPS Boarding Pods - Fight with fellow marines in an M7 boarding Pod! (Probably difficult because of animation meshes, particle effects, weapons, content, Internals) = SALES
Rendered Planets - Players can de-orbit and burn in the atmosphere of the planet, since space ships are not designed to be SSTOs. (Single-Stage Space planes)
Multiplayer - ability for two or more players to connect to a server and play together. (One player has to host because the X universe seems to work best on one PC) However, Dedicated X Universe servers would be awesome! The current gaming trend is social gaming, so cutting into that mega-cake would be a boost for game popularity and awesomeness. Though, Steer clear from Eve and everything should be fine. = SALES
Implementation difficulty:
Easy
Medium
Hard
Impossible - Probably not do-able with the game engine or scripting system.
I do see some problems with drawing a dynamic ship and a dynamic defense, because I'm not sure of the validity of drawing an object with dynamic parts and turrets.
I think Egosoft should add some kind of capability for modders to script easier. It's very hard to get into the scripting groove when you have to click through like 20 menus to find what you are looking for.
Thank you EGOSOFT for such an awesome game! (Though, I think I bought X3TC at least 3 times now lol... gotta love those expansions)