The idea with colony ships is that it's a huge effort to build all the infrastructure for a settlement in a (trans)portable form. If you could have
units of some sort that are as expensive as colony modules but can be launched from some really huge ship instead of the ship itself being consumable that would probably be workable. You're free to build warship hulls with colony modules, after all. So it's not like the game requires that all colony ships be slow and vulnerable.
I agree that the completely universal interchangeability of cargo space is a bit much. We need 'population quarters' to be reinstated, at the least. Some additional cargo classes might be good or might make the game unnecessarily complex. Remember that the AI has to be able to play the game, too.
Yes, we've been asking for more detailed ground combat for a long time. He claims it will be 'slightly' more ocmplex than SE 4 was, but doesn't give details yet. It would be nice if you could
recover troops from a planet if it looks like they are going to lose and be slaughtered.
Ammunition apart from generic 'supplies' is in the game, as 'ordnance', and has to be generated just like generic supplies.
Having the actual freighters that move supplies in the game would be a nightmare. It would make a bit more sense if planets that were blockaded couldn't build with anything but
locally produced resources, though.
And when your empire gets cut into large chunks by stellar manipulation the chunks ought to have to function independently rather than having resource transports magically bridge the gap that your warships cannot.
Races should have a much more persistent sense of identity, yes. We are hoping that the AI for SE 5 will be more advanced and cause alien populations to take much longer to settle down and accept citizenship in a new empire, especially if conquered by violence. The same goes for 'slavery' of various sorts and even 'xenophagy' by predatory types like Kzinti. Many people have asked for more complex interactions of populations. Hopefully that means MM is motivated to develop it.
MM has stated that it will be possible to have populations and resource gathering in space so at the least we will be able to play 'nomads' properly. Perhaps some other types of play will be possible, as well.
Mines are badly in need of some articulation. The 'all or nothing' problem so prevalent in the SE series is really bad with mines. Yes, we need mines to have actual rules for variable chances of detection and variable chances to hit a given ship. So far MM has not said anything about if or how mines might change.
Boarding combat is
very small scale for a game like SE 5 to cover in any detail. Sure, it ought to take more than one round to decide. It ought to be possible for a ship to spend many rounds being fought over and possibly unable to actually attack anyone externally. But going into details of weapons and defenses for boarding troops is really getting micro-management crazy.
Yes, retreat is supposed to have returned in SE 5.
Whew... I'm out of replies for now.