Ideas... (random)

[cerealbusiness]

- "The store can loan money. Players can take out a loan from the store which they have to pay back in a set number of turns, or risk losing land, mules, etc. The loan gains interest so, like spoilage with food or energy, the player has incentive to pay back quickly. Debt is factored into the asset summary each turn."

- There should be a way to expand storage, build protection from events/weapons, or create transportation. This way you could lower your spoil rate or allow yourself to traverse the now massive map faster. This would add strategy to the map and how players invest their money.

- land auctions should not allow players to move down, only up. This is how a real auction works, you cant back out.

- likely future events should be displayed as off world news. "crystite craze sweeps the galaxy" (lame, i know) means that in the next few turns there will likely be higher crystite prices. "orbit reaches closest point to sun in 100 years!" could mean increased chance of sunspot activity in the next few turns. this adds to the speculation aspect of the game.

-changing the outfit of a mule should cost an energy or something more than some money.

- with five players there should be a fifth industry/resource. maybe something that makes the before mentioned transportation/storage/protection/etc bonus buildings, or something

- a weapon that makes a chosen tile barren and another random tile barren as well. This creates the ability to combat other players with huge risks and there of course would be the ability to protect your tiles. rough idea but adds strategy in my opinion.

ADDED:

Make it so that for the land rush, a predetermined amount of plots are offered and then the players take turns (depending on place/character chosen) choosing one of the plots.

The market should value energy and food over long term. It would, in order to closer evaluate energy units (it usually doesn't price them more than 40 bucks), take into account the need for food and especially energy in the turns to come.

[data2008]

nice ideas, especially the predetermined plot offerings...

[cerealbusiness]

thank you sir! kind of stolen/inspired by a board game called puerto rico.

[Gohar]

I really like the idea of changing the outfitting to cost an energy unit. Brings a nice new element without it being overly obtrusive, not being a major gameplay changer either. Will mean that there is a price for running after the latest production trend without having planned for it earlier.

it would be important that having to give up one unit of energy isn't prohibitive in practical terms, but I don't think it would be. The only people for whom it would be prohibitive would be for those who are in acute need of energy in the first place to continue functioning, and those are those who want to make or change other mules to energy mules. SO there would need to be one exception:   there should be no cost if changing a non energy mule to an energy mule, because it would be wrong to punish someone in need of energy for trying to make it.