I though I might put up some details of a game I've been working on for over a year now (on and off). Its mostly something I've been wanting to play myself and working on in my spare time. I am working on the AI now, after that is functional i should have a playable game though still missing a lot of the features I plan.
Game Description:
4X Turn based galactic strategy
Hex Grid based map
Modular based Ship design
AI Corporations that are the base of your empires industry\research
Jump based movement
Detailed Empire Diplomacy
Dynamic sensor FOW
Thoughts behind current plans:
Planets: Planets will be your income and resource production, ships can be produced in shipyards in space but ship components will come from the planets. Corps will mine resources on the planets but mine efficiency will drop for each mine on the planet, so there will be an optimal number of mines for each planet, which is effected by planets resource density too. Population is limited by food supply and housing, both don't have fixed limited but a planet can only produce so much food though you can import food from another planet to increase supported population.
AI Corporations: I'm looking at AI corps to give you a sense of an established empire without all the micro-management. This will also create targets of opportunity for trade routes and construction yards, but if you chose to attack a the corps within the empire you may be burning your bridges so if you take over their planets the corp will move on and won't help your infrastructure. Corps may be loyal to their home empire or may not, If they are loyal they may give discounts to purchases or even commit some of their security forces to defending your space
Ships: Ships will be modular based that you design, one big thing i'm thinking is to not have shields... so you can't just send off one powerful fleet\ship to kill half the enemy, it will still take damage and need to come back to repair. Tech can decrease the damage you take. you might have a stock of parts to allow repair infield once but this will be consumed and need to be restocked.
Jump Movement: I'm thinking of Jump based movement to allow more decisions before you take your turn. You could jump max distance but not know if you will land on hostile ships or jump shorter\save capacitor but only get one move per turn, This will also encourage the use of expendable scouts
Fleets: What I hope to avoid is hard group\fleet limits instead i plan to have AOE weapons that will damage all ships on a grid but are weaker then point blank weapons. Graphically as more ships collect on a grid it will just re-scale all ships so it visually fits on the grid.
Empire Diplomacy: I'm working on having detailed diplomacy but without having over complication. I plan to include just a few different types of treaties. Some of the treaties such as alliances can be ruled by a voting system and this can be determined by which type of alliance you choose to create. If your a warrior race you might form an alliance with other warrior races and votes will be counted on military strength. Or you could like defense and diplomacy and form an alliance on total population or even just one vote per empire.
Alliance Votes: Alliances can vote on anything from who to declare war on to kicking out members or inviting new ones. Again I don't want to create to many options so that only one or two get used.
Sensor Behavior: For detecting other ships it will work from a degrading strength out from your ship. You could have sensors that can detect pretty far but only the most obvious ships\fleets, etc. Detection will be based on a sensor signature for each ship and will add together for each ship on the grid, so large fleets will be easy to detect, and solo ships can stay undetected easier. Sensor strengths will work off the highest number, so large fleets wont detect other ships any easier then the ship in the fleet with the best sensors... i could include a small stacking boost to sensor strength but balance those options later.
Research: Still determining how to do this. I don't want to an empire to be able to out research another empire and their ships can't even scratch them. a few thoughts for this is to have research actually done by corps and not directly controlled then you just purchase licencing off the corp. this would mean the newest tech is expensive but comes down with age so smaller empire could always purchase the older techs even if from another empire. Corp loyalty will effect this and could stop a corp selling any tech to an empire. Plus you could help research along buy injecting cash\grants into the corp and defending research outpost\projects from hostiles\pirates. This may be too hands off but will try this way first and evaluate from there.
Standard Game Items: I'm still looking at having a lot of the whats considered standard 4X space items such as, asteroid belts, nebula's, wormholes, stations, pirates, events, wonders, etc. these are things that i will add as i go and determine how the fit in.
Inspiration: Galactic Civilizations, Civilization V, Anno, Endless Space, EVE Online. I like the diplomacy in GC, forming alliances then declaring war on half the galaxy at once. Civ V has good unit control (not perfect) but the controlling and attacking armys was fun. Endless space has a great UI and streamlined interface and gameplay that is great, would like have a bit more depth with it. EVE has great economy and depth with dynamic ship combinations and setups.
Wow yeah i guess I've thought about it a lot... lol. but yeah if you've read all that and are still interested in anything or want more info\plans, I wouldn't mind seeing what other people think of these ideas and hearing suggestions. Everything is still pre-alpha and mostly likely will change, especially stuff like GUI visibility and background colors. I'm doing all the models\graphics and programming, I may be interested in help especially with texturing and models but still enjoy working on it myself too.
lol
Impressive. Look good. 
. once I just removed the particle trails still keeping the debris chucks it would stay around 50-120 FPS which i'm happy with.