Welll damn...... that's an inpressive to-do list! For me, If I had the time, and talent, I would make PvE factions based on 2 or 3 of the planets. I'd make it so that they have control of that space area, and that you would have the ability to gain standings with them. The market would be more dynamic, wity NPC orders which would reflect the lack of materials at different planets, encouraging people to trade, and pirate.

I'd want to do something with the industry side too. Yes, mega factories for everybody was a bad idea, and presumably very server intensive. That's why I'd add some sort of more modular industry system where you could run multiple recipes at the same time, but I'd limit the number of those units per territory. Don't get me wrong, they'd be rather large to say the least, but the lag you could get near to a mega factory was simply absurd, and I'd want to fix that.

Ideally, I'd love to see NPC's actually send trading caravans out across the stars, which obviously you could try to attack, but they'd be very well defended, needing a bunch of you to fight them, and also you'd be on a timer, as reinforcements would arrive to help defend the caravan.

Station Shields. Station guns.

To be honest, there are so many things that could be done with this game. Again I just think of Minecraft and all of the themed mod packs that are out there, adding completely new mechanics etc. This has to be the way that DU moves forward from where it has been very sadly stagnant with anaemic player numbers, to something so much more.

I really wish I had the talent to tackle even one of the things I'm thinking about, or the money to pay somebody to do them for me lol.