[LordFulgrymm]

Not sure if this one has been suggested, and its probably a bit late anyway, but here goes - debris fields forming after battles, that can be mined using robo-miners like asteroid fields.

It could be useful for finite resource games. Think about it; there's just been a few dozen dreadnoughts blown away in a sector. Thats potentially several thousand kT of resources, so why not let some of that be reclaimed? have the value of the field based upon a percentage of the total value of the destroyed ships.

OK, it may not immediately be worth it, but I have found that many battles take place in the same locations (same heavily contested planets or warp points) so the debris could potentially accumulate after each battle.

I guess this can bring in other ideas such as procuring technology from debris/derelicts etc...maybe a % chance to find an intact component in a debris field if you use the right type of equipment, say a salvage tug equipped with a space yard and some sort of scanner, but perhaps thats complicating things a bit.

Talking of derelicts: one thing thats always slightly annoyed me is if you can't afford the maintenance costs anymore, you lose a random ship or ships (crew scuttles the ship); firstly, why not set a priority system for which ships should be abandoned, and also set whether the ships are scuttled and destroyed, or should simply be abandoned but left intact in a stable orbit somewhere, for later retrieval and repair. Abandoned ships have no allegience, and all components would be inactive; all thats required is a boarding party to come back and reclaim the ship.

Of course, simply leaving the ship somewhere runs the risk that an enemy could easily capture it! I just think it would be nice to have the option; do you just blow it up and build another, or risk leaving it and try to reclaim it later? Could produce some interesting situations, racing to claim that hi-tech dreadnought that someone foolishly left floating in space...