Hi, my first post here, but I've greatly enjoyed SEIV and just wanted to add my 2cents to what I'd like to see in SEV
Heroic Races, as a trait.
See, it always seems that in Sci Fi settings, Humans usually never win by sheer force of numbers, or greater production capacity, superior tec, etc, etc. It is always something 'heroic' that wins the day. Like in Babylon 5, Starwars, Startrek, and so on and so forth.
I imagine it would be quite easy to code. For example, if I was playing the Terrans, and chose a hypothetical 1500pt trait called 'Heroic', then every time I enter into space combat - there would be maybe 1% chance for one of my ships to gain a 'heroic' crew.
It would have to be a significant bonus - something like 200-300% extra on all stats. From that moment on, your empire has a heroic captain that can - in combination with other heroic captains - fight a war against superior odds and maybe, just maybe win
20-30 turns into a war, you might have an entire fleet of Heroic captains, and you could then lead this group into an attack deep into enemy territory, doing considerable damage.
I don't think it would be an overpowering trait, since if your fleet is destroyed in the first few turns, you likely will not get to have more than one or two 'heroic' ships. But it would make other races think twice about attacking a 'heroic' race, since if the war drags on, you might face much stiffer resistance than anticipated.
Maybe even add special abilities if a ship that is *already* heroic gets the random bonus again - for example super stealth, super shields, whatever. Well, just an idea
I'll post it in a thread as well, just to see what people think... this is probably not the place to discuss it in depth.