Terrain:
1. Moons: Colonizable and of varying types, you build a mine on it either crystal or metal, but you can also add a ‘module’ to it. A military module provides tactical slots equal to a default asteroid planet, while a civilian one is essentially a research station and a little more money. The Military base should also be a missile launcher… or perhaps give it the missile launcher ability of the Sova. Moons would create a small bubble of gravity that swells from the overall well; this if aligned with a phase lane could be a good advantage for the attacker!
2. Nebulas/Anomalies: Make them thicker visually.
3. Asteroid Fields: Have resource asteroids here, and see outpost. Also their gravity well should be irregular.
Outpost Structure: Can be built by Colony Frigate; can be built in a non-colonized system; allows one constructor, and has one fighter/bomber wing and some very weak defenses. This can be built in asteroid fields to allow access to their resource asteroids or in nebulas merely to observe… so weak militarily as to almost not matter to any significant strike. Build limit of 1 per system, can be built in a colonized system perhaps to boost allegiance? Would use 2 logistics slots as well.
4. Gas Giants: See Moons.
5. Stars: Some stars should have a moon or two; also stars would have varying gravity wells, which would/could affect the distance of planets to each other. Thus a heavy star would have planets very close to it, in general. Stars could sometimes also be a nebula/anomaly and would have those effects there.
6. Phase Lanes: Occasionally some phase lanes would be special and go very long distances but be very fast, or artificially slow, or connect to other stars traditionally! These would represent wormholes essentially.
7. Pirates/Bases: When enemy trade stations and ships are destroyed and also some pirate ships… they should leave behind money for the attacker to pick up. Extra incentive for raiders; Pirate bases should have ‘loot’ to take from colonizing the planet, and have defenses. Some times a star should have two pirate bases, or new bases can be formed by a pirate fleet?
8. Planets: More variety on the regular types… not all desert planets need look the same!
