[Alneyan]

A few random ideas:

- Paranoia at its finest: all your ships are equipped with weaponry, since you cannot be sure what may befall on them. You are to protect all your wormholes with satellites, or other such defensive measures, while your planets require adequate and immediate protection as soon as they are settled. If you happen to have a Racial tech, you may consider only using these weapons, since you should *not* trust the technology used by your foes, plotting in your back. Beware of strange species, of their shades, and of anything out of the ordinary!

- Berserkers at heart: as we all know, the Berserker culture does not provide with many drawbacks. Therefore, a proper Berserker shall focus on weaponry, disregarding any form of protection such as armour and shields. Alternatively, you may also behave in an unusual manner when dealing with other species, such as declaring war on a whim, breaking treaties, or refusing to make contact to begin with.

- Firm believers in chaos: sadly, your research isn't quite predictable, and so a random project is selected once another project has been completed. Tough luck if you happen to keep on falling on the Organic Extraction technology!

- Carefulness saves lives: only Empires short on their budget put only once every essential component on their ships. Therefore, you are to add several bridges, life supports, crew quarters, quantum reactors (if applicable), ECM, Combat Sensors, cloaking devices, or what fancies you as being essential, on every single ship. You might also want to put a Repair Bay on every ship, just in case. Nay, it isn't redundant, but merely careful planning!

- The *Ahem* quick-blooded culture: your citizens happen to have a rather destructive behaviour, resulting in less facilities on each world (or the scrapping of some of them from time to time), and some of your ships might be destroyed in "friendly" duels. They cannot help being appealed by the idea of blowing up planets or stars as well, making such devices in high demand among this Empire, even if their economy cannot quite afford it. You may also want to make this Empire loses happiness as turns go by, while removing the happiness bonus due to troops.

- Virtue is the base of every life: you cannot help it, you are too nice even with your foes, and will make some gifts to them, even in the midst of a bloody war. Obviously, glassing planets or using Stellar Manipulation to harm anybody is not even considered, as you are so good-hearted. There might also be a shortage of warships, since your people does not quite want to become part of a pointless military, expecting all Empires to behave as nicely as their own.

- Our ships make up their own fleets: there is no proper command of your warships, meaning they work on their own without making any kind of fleet, although you might see associations between ships when needed. It unfortunately means that every ship is highly versatile, as it doesn't have a specialized purpose for the lack of a fleet strategy. An average ship will have the fundamentals, a repair bay, fighter and satellite bays, likely a minesweeper or two, a minelay if you are being followed, a sensor, shields and armour, point defence weaponry, and... If you are lucky, you might even have some space left for weapons.

Hmm, these are nice ideas PvK, assuming you can actually be patient enough to bear with the ministers. (Would it be taken as being amiss if the brillant Fleet Command accused all the ministers of incompetency and sheer silliness?)