Sector Siege needs improvement

The problem with the research especially at higher difficulty levels is that it takes so long you can afford the time to play around. Also the weapons are either really usefully or not so much. I just finished my first campaign and can say that my weapons progression went like this orbs first then all the tier 1 buffs then missiles and the missile bombers then all the tier 2 buffs the if I was still fighting photons and tier 3. Tried other stuff an it was just not worth the time to get out.

In an RTS people only research what they need to win each battle. Right now the research system looks bloated because its a full size system in a skirmish scale game. I like the idea of moving both the upgrade and research to the star map as it fits the current scale of the game better. If you did do this I would not allow the research to persist beyond each individual campaign or skirmish. That would just make the game too easy after a while. This is a huge amount of work though and might be better implemented in a sequel.

Alternately you could increase the number of ships and stations for more epic battles where specialist ships and stations have a place. Say triple the ships stations and resource accumulation would do it without stressing the processor as that's about year 2000 levels of render calls on a quad core processor. Even as much as 5 times the ships and stations shouldn't cause lag even with huge numbers of fighters considering the power of modern smart phones and computers. Bigger battles mean longer missions and the option to use things like flak ships for fleet defense or marine strike fleets to capture ships or clusters of stations.

As far as persistent bonuses I think the simplest would be boost the number of men you had to assign before each mission. Either as unlockable popcap increases or one use buyanles like the renforcments. Here again it would be best if these things did not persist beyond the current campaign or skirmish as they could be game breaking otherwise. But it would reflect your ability to field more personal as your war effort progresses. Leveling up these units could also work making each engineer or scientists more effective and providing a bigger bonus.

Personally I'm not sure its a since of accomplishment that's missing so much as a story and a bit more variety in mission type. When you take out a race there's no cut scene or real nugget of lore and it has absolutely no effect on the campaign. Right now its essentially 25 identical missions and all you get at the end is a small block of text. You might want to consider adding in some rewards for reaching certain milestones in the campaign. Something to break up the grind.