Well in long term I assume we wana go to something like micromanagement, something that turns the gaming more advanced, regardless its not something to hook up new players really, but atleast adds some challence to the curent playerbase and can possibly be something to make few oldies return.
I wouldnt mind either if the game "forced" you to direction the admins wanted the game to be played. Such as the fleet morale to left the newbies alone. Forcing galaxies to stick together by some rewards from doing so. Or even interrupting political manouvers if the playerbase cant balance on their own. This will atleast stop the shrinking of an universe. I would guess quite a few alliances and HCs still existed if they werent fcked over and over again and they were able toenter a field of battle with somewhat fair and challencing conditions. Also many new players would have stayed for same reasons.
I must agree about addons to new game play. To mention few I self suggested, the ground troops adding a new dimension to battle. Perhaps some weaponary outside casual fleet also, missiles and so on and definately something to counter the covert-ops too. More resources and trading of them would add more to do with the community and other playerbase also, aswell as trading caught prisoners. I wouldnt mind either if the galaxies needed to work more together to achieve better rank, such as common projects, common goverment settings, common pds defence and so on...
Some units colecting dead metals, scrab, steal funds or to give higher salvage would add something to tactical play aswell.
As I have said multiple times, most of the pa clones have made far more better and advanced features than the mother game itself and used some extra imagination to make them apear. Ofc this is forced to them by not falling to be the same game, but I wouldnt mind if the imagination were used here aswell to develope the game further.
How ever I definately rather play game with easy usage than use my time for multiply clicking to achieve something in game. If the game is easy to access and handle it will certainly make the playing experience nicer and u need less effort to play it. Thats when u can also afford to start adding some complexity to game aswell, when your time doesnt go to unnessesary things and u can focus to mastering your game play.