Optimization would be awesome, and so would much stronger AI. Beyond that..economy?

Right now economy is a planet's population+trade income, which has everything to do with the length of one single trade route, rather than, say, the network affect of choke points and nexuses. Where, for instance, a planet with three spurs of trade lines would likely earn profits as being an endpoint on three, currently it just takes the longest line, making each planet in the line equally important. A lot could be added to the strategy of positioning if positions mattered for trade. Soo...I'm obviously just imagining toward my own preferences, but what I'd love is an expansion, where the last two were Entrenchment and Diplomacy, another supplement to the actual battle, Support, or Logistics, or some such. Rework the way the trade works, in a manner that doesn't make it too extra complicated, but does actually have a greater impact on planet values. Because encouraging single line trade empires..what?

I hope it will be a Campaign in the new Expansion

There wont be? Why they posted a poll on the mainpage then? Almost all voters want an expansion.

Add supecaptial ship, converted from lv10 capital ship, or 2, with ql new features, fleet bonuses, ect ect.

such a ship could be something special, no 1-shoot entire fleet, but should have some skills for empire and for fleet, even diplo maybe. Variety of options is hudge. Suprise me

That's more of an issue with the community then the developers.  I remember years ago just browsing on the forums and hearing people bitch that pros use alternate IDs to play against newbies and crush them.  Maybe a solution is to link all IDs on the same account.  If you score a win as one, the counter goes up on all of them so this practice cannot happen.

One person got so pissed off since they said they refused or couldn't put in the time to be on and playing like everyone else, that they were always having alliances formed against them even if it wasn't officially done in game by players who knew each other.  They didn't want to be 'one of the guys' or couldn't be due to time constraints, and for all of his bitching the answer he got was, "just put in your time and pay your dues" which was exactly the point he was making about how difficult it was for new people to have an enjoyable experience.  No one wants to be picked on for a hundred games before someone finally decides to help 'em out.  Developer side remedies aren't really going to do much if the other players are dicks about it.  Ultimately it falls on us to make that person feel good about their time online and want to come back rather then write it off forever.  Reading the horror story experiences on the forums is what kept me away from online PvP for a while until I found a casual group who sucked as bad as me and just didn't care about it...  But that came after 2 years of looking...  Most people give up after a couple of weeks.

What the devs can do though is like I said, link wins and losses to all ID's on the same account.  Then you can't hide with a new name.

Maybe bring all of the lobbies back together as one so no matter what version you have, you can chat with everyone in a main lobby, then let the players create game rooms outside of that to set up games as they do now.  Put up a (E) or a (D) or some other icon next to the name of the person that signifies the difference between the versions based on which was used when a person logged on to ICO.

And probably most importantly, making games (and channels) discoverable.  It's stupid to see 54 players online and 6 afk people sitting in the main lobby and that's all you know about.  If you knew of the room that had 20 people in it, maybe you could join that and get in on some of the action.

Of course making it all a little more graphical couldn't hurt either.  I frequently reference the old mPlayer service from the late 90's.  Was it perfect?  Of course not, but it was miles better then what ICO is now and that was 15 years ago.  There's just no excuse for that.  You take what worked and you do that.  The main lobby everyone goes to no matter what version they have, the channel lists so you can see what's out there, the player counts in the channel so you know if that's where everyone is at, the type of game being displayed so others interested in that type knew where to go, the person who creates the channel is the mod and can lock it so griefers can't come in and piss everyone off...  Simple things...

Another reference from the old mPlayer is the use of Wizards and Sages.  Wizards were devs who jumped on and played the games.  It was always fun to kill one in a match.  >=]  Then there were Sages, community members found worthy of having limited admin powers by being helpful and had the time to put in to settle disputes and set up ladder matches and whatever else arose.  At this point the community is mostly devastated and non existent, and what's left doesn't need them, but future games might...

But again it still comes down to the players involved to either help or hurt the experience and we've got no one to blame but ourselves if someone decides never to play multiplayer again..

IC should IMO go for broke on a new expansion. What i mean is they should take what we have been trying to tell them for the last 3 years, and implement it.

A SP campaign i would save for Sins 2 (if there will be a sins 2). The bad thing about SP campaigns is it would have to be scripted. Like the HW campaigns. For a game designed to be pure sandbox that will be very difficult to pull off. The SP campaign if implemented should be a re-hashing of the lore told in mission format from the point of view of all 3 (or 4) factions. As in a campaign for each faction like supreme commander with ultimately a similar victory, or defeat ending for all factions. Complete with cutscenes, and in game dialog.

The most important thing is the Bug Fixes, and Optimization which both go hand, and hand. Bug Fixing helps to optimize the game by eliminating things that would cause problems, and slowdowns. Improving existing things to work better is a big plus as TSOP proved. TSOP accomplished many bug fixes, and improvements. It brought a game that 2 gig crashed often down to a stable platform that never uses more than 1.7 gigs on max settings. With very little loss of detail.

IC can use this as a foundation for the next expansion. Along with updating the existing engine to use 64 bit code. Which in turn would make the iron engine able to use the extremely high end graphics without worrying about a 2 gig limit. The only worry should be if we have cpu, ram, and a video card that can handle it. Original sins set a benchmark on extreme hardware scaling. It looked, and ran great on low end systems as well as high end. It should keep that standard, and take it one step beyond with 64 bit code.

I Like Sins gameplay as it is now. I wouldnt change it too much for the next expansion. Improve the existing before you add on new stuff.

TSOP is a patch and NOT an expansion. I refuse to pay for what should be a patch. 

Can add more star base types but AI will not build them.

Be able to add another research section in modding.

Add Z axis for placing planets and structures

Oh ya, not to be completely abandon after release. Update the Forge Tools and for Christ sake write a pinned post on placing maps and mods. The pinned post are ridiculously out dated and full of WRONG info. eg

A readme could be placed in the root galaxy folder explaining where maps actually go. I am sure a moderator can edit that section of the pinned post but I guess there is no money to be made doing so.

I'll be honest. I'd rather see a new game or a sequel then an expansion. A lot of the stuff people really want isn't practical in an expansion, but IS practical if you're doing something new.

I agree with MyFisto in that we should not have to "pay" for bug fixes, and optimization. The Optimization/Fix portion can be released as an all around patch for the 3 existing versions of Sins BEFORE the new expansion is released.

If a new faction is to be added the game MUST be optimized first, or else we will be back to square one with the 2 gig crashes (If sins remains 32 bit).

I also agree that lifting all hard code limits, and opening the AI for modding is a must for the modding community to continue. It is indeed the responsibility of the mod makers not the Dev's to prevent their mods from being over excessive to the point of being non playable.

Lets not forget the empire tree.Make it stationary so you can pick stuff without it jumping every other second.This should be easy and I have no idea why it hasnt been fixed yet????

Yes eliminate the jump.When I click on something it moves.I like to have my other plantes on there thats the point of the tree.Whats the point if I have to unpin everything?Everytime something jumps in to a diff world the whole thing moves(friendlys or just my own ships moving) causeing me to miss the ship I was trying to click causing delays in my battle tactics.Easy fix is allow the top and bottom to expand while keeping the middle focused .I can adjust it to view what I want myself.Also in large battles when you have to do alot of scrolling down to find something sometimes I have to do it 3 or 4 times cause as soon as I get there it jumps back to the top of the list in the well.

Different quick starts is an excellent idea.   Maybe 2 or 3 to pick from.

Also pirate strength options when starting.

Probes that allow you to see the grav well but the enemy cant see the probe unless at very close range to encourage patrols. These probes should be able to launch from another planet.

Auto dock strike craft option to reduce load on the system.