[Strategia_In_Ultima]

AgentZero, as for your statement about Russian, it's pretty simple (I think):

You detect what the other person is thinking. Even if you're only thinking in abstract text, you will automatically trigger memory "files" with related subjects, which incorporate images. You can extrapolate what the other person is saying through analysis of these images.

Also, Psychic races should be able to generate more intel, as they can scan the minds of their opponents, and they must be able to contact all other empires they don't know but someone else does when you're talking to that person.

You scan his mind for communications channels, and you input them into your diplomatic computer (or whatever the hell you use, slaves, etc.) so you can contact them.

Also, I've had some ideas:

Planetary Cloaking Facilities.
These can be various types of facilitites that hide, for instance, cargo, facilities, orbital objects, entire moons, or even the fact that the planet is colonized.
This could be an easy way to deal with an enemy fleet:
Take one of your most important planets (your homeworld for example) and construct massive space defenses - sats, minefields, starbases, ships, fighters etc - and then cloak them. The enemy might be duped into thinking your homeworld is defenseless. When his fleet attacks, he'll have a surprise waiting for him...
Also, you should be able to activate/deactivate planetary cloaks during combat - hide defenses or weapons platforms, for instance.

Power Generation.
Sort of like supplies for planets. Power can be generated by a Power Plant or something (or you can upgrade the standard power plant always available, and build secondary reactors) that generates a certain amount of Power. Simple facilities, like miners, farms, etc. always work, but things like atmospheric reprocessing plants, planetary shielding, ship/fleet trainers, etc. require power to operate. This makes regulation of these things important; now you can simply colonize a tiny moon in a system and build planetary and systemwide stellar manipulation shielding facilities, but do you have any idea how much power these things consume? How is a tiny moon capable of summoning that much energy?
You might say that tiny moons won't be able to change their atmosphere, because they've only got one slot for facilities and you need power for the reprocessor, but this need not be an issue; each planet has its own small power source that is not a facility so it doesn't take up room. The amount of power generated is dependent on planet size, population present, and upgrade level. You can build additional Reactors (which take up cargo space, similar to weapons platforms) or even whole new Power Plants (which are facilities). You should also be able to construct things like Solar/Nuclear/Fusion/Antimatter/whatever power sats/bases/ships and power relay sats/bases/ships. Non-planetary power sources (think solar satellites, nuclear power plant space stations) also generate power (dependent on things like stars in a system, amount of Radioactives in your storages (which are consumed by nuclear power plants unless you can supply them with uranium or plutonium), amount of Antimatter in your storages, etc.) and transmit it down to the planet. Power relays transmit power between power sources and planets, between planets, or between systems. You don't need a relay for orbital generators.

Comms ranges. You can only directly control a ship within such-and-such range of a planet, such-and-such range if it has a transmitter of level such-and-such, and you can drop relay probes (which can't be attacked, produced or carried, but which simply cost a certain amount of resources) in deep space (like Enterprise did). If a ship gets out of this range, it will try to follow its orders, then return to within your comms range via the shortes/safest route. If you want your ships to perform deep-space exploration missions outside comms range, you need to issue them orders first (i.e. explore for at least 10 turns/5 systems/2 empires/10 habitable planets/etc. or a combination of these) and they will carry out these orders. Also, explorations/discoveries made outside of comms range will not be visible to you after the ship reenters comms range.
This need not necessarily apply to inter-Empire communications, but there should be a toggle in the Setup screen to choose whether you want it to or not.

Thnx AgentZero