There is no doubt that something will probably be done about the whole "see my whole freaking fleet's stats!!" diplomacy window, but at the same time it adds the potential for an interesting twist. I've played games where I had a military orders of magnitude above everyone else's without ever building warships myself (huge income from other sources). Now granted, some of this is probably due to the drooling ai at this pointI'm suggesting a couple different treaties:
- "Arms Trade Buyer" the basic idea is that a given faction convinces another to let them become buyers of their military vessels & gets to tee them in the diplomacy window . While the players might use this to become buyers from other AI's, I'd love to see the ai do the same sometimes when they are in a bind! Maybe instead of "ack, run away/keep building up mah fleet!", the ai says "ack, go shopping!" Would I trade some ships for a class 4 on the far side of an immense galaxy? some techs? a reasonable amount of credits? Bleep yes! getting this should improve relations some/lessen the relations hit for a weaker military, maybe cause the ai to occasionally make offers of $ships for $payment
- "Arms Trade Seller" The basic idea is that $FactionA gives this to $FactionB Granting FactionB the ability to peruse the catalogue so to speak. Granting this should 1. improve relations some/lessen the relations bonus for a stronger military and cause the ai to consider that as a source of military might of course include all the bits & bobs with the ai actually using it
- "Weapons/defenses sales" This last one is probably more of a maybe in a future expansion/sequel consideration item, but the idea is that the buyer & seller work out terms of cost per unit of $tech unlock for ships (i.e. X credits flat buy/lease)& the buyer is able to make use of that $otherfaction's unresearched tech in their own shipbuilding at the cost of needing to spend X per individual usage of that tech on the ship at build time/per turn as agreed. This has the benefit of allowing another desirable faction to have a bit of an edge/breathing room in military capabilities without giving them a platform to continue advancing from in exchange for bit of credits.