It's been just over 20 years since I played a magnificent pbm galaxy strategy game. I'm looking forward to the re-evolution of the genre with GCIII. I've played a lot of Civ5 recently, and I like the migration of some of those concepts into this game. A few features that I would like to see in GCIII are 1) automated harvesting routes for harvesting mass (from asteroids) and energy (from gas stars) 2) automated patrol routes for sentry ships (looks like that may be planned), 3) ability to create tunnels between remote star systems, instead of just depending on existing wormholes, 4) auto-attack and defense systems for starbases.
Now if we could just have an awesome combat flight-sim minigame to substitute for instant combat if the player desired. You might have a minor defeat from automated rolls, but if you got in there and used your chaff and ECM and decoys you could pull out a victory with your flying skill. That would be stunning. Wing Commander and Privateer were like the first games I ever played that kept me up to dawn.