Hey, just registered. I've been playing this game nonstop since it released and got all my friends at work into it too. It's bar none my favorite iOS game ever! Fantastic work. I will be helping out your kickstarter.
My suggestions:
To your immediate questions, I would vote for environmental hazards, those sound fun. Mercenaries might be cool too because bigger fleets and bigger battles are awesome! 'traps' might be ok, but I worry they will feel unfair at times.
Balance suggestions:
Lasers - they are by far the worst weapon, and I really want to like them. Maybe they can do more damage the closer the enemy is? I also notice that the laser cannon says "long range" in the description, but is shorter range than the energy cannon which says "medium range" in its description! Might be worth fixing one way or another. Also, laser point defense is absolutely worthless, it says it's great vs fighters, but only does 5 damage to hull and 15 to shield before upgrades and has a slow firing rate. I've never seem them shoot down a missile. I really think lasers should be the ideal way to track and destroy missiles, while bolter and gatling should be fighter-focused, thematically. Lasers could really use a boost or a different purpose. They look really cool though!
Escape pods, teleports, and Shield boosts take up valuable red turret slots and I have little incentive to choose them in games. They might be better in blue module slots instead, or even hangar slots?
The Plasma Bomber - these guys are in serious need of balance tweaks. They require a LOT of upgrade points to be able to do any real damage to anything. They have such a slow move and turn radius that they rarely get more than one shot off before dying. They seem to die as quickly as any other fighter or drone - I would think a bomber would have more hull than a fighter, or even shields? Finally, I notice all the fighters and bombers shoot at where the enemy currently is, rather than where they will be, like the red turrets do. Thus, the plasma bomber in particular misses very very often when shooting. I don't know how easy that is to tweak, but it would be cool.
Purchasing weapons from stations - I would love to see a little more variety of weapons purchasable from stations. Perhaps stations can 'grow back' new weapons once you have purchased one from them so you can get more variety?
New module ideas:
Speed/hull upgrades - maybe add more blue modules that help the ship move faster or survive longer?
Photon-torpedo style weapon - I think a cool turret might be something like a photon torpedo. I'm sure I'm not alone in trying to mimic weapon loadouts from my favorite sci-fi shows, and while Babylon 5 or Battlestar Galactica are very doable, Star Trek proves very difficult to mimic and still win the game. I might like some sort of medium speed tracking plasma torpedo with a fairly long range. A little like the mega plasma cannon, I guess, but with missile-style homing capabilities. Obviously you'd want to balance that with a higher cost, but it would do a ton of damage.
MAC/Rail Cannons - This is a little like the current Projectile Cannon, but with a twist. Halo among other sci-fi franchises make use of massive slow-firing spinal mount projectile cannons that pack a huge punch and can potentially weaken shields. I'm not sure if the game engine is capable of spinal-mount weapons with a narrow field of fire, but I think that would introduce cool tactical elements to the game (or even broadside-only fixed cannons!). Nevertheless, a projectile cannon that fires rarely, but fires an extremely fast shell that does nuke-level hull damage, and maybe 100 shield damage. I'm imagining a recharge time of like 15 seconds at least!
Different fighter types - I would really like to see a variety of fighters like we see possible in First Contact. Plasma/laser/gatling/shields.
Larger/more powerful Particle/plasma Beam weapons - I'd love to get a really powerful hull-damage laser like we see in Babylon 5, something that feels really deadly. I know there's some rare celestial mega lasers but I hardly ever find them, and they just aren't strong enough! A nuke-level end-game weapon that is super expensive.
That's all I can think of for now. I want to see this game succeed so much, because you really deserve it! Best of luck.
