The only thing that bothers me is having to research for asteroid mining. But then again, like Bashar said, its what makes the game interesting. The current game is pretty straight forward, and one of the few things you have to use ur brain at is deciding what to research next (especially at a early stage). Its fun to see ppl launching with a high variety of eta's (FI/CO ranging from eta 7 till eta 11), do you sacrifice a extra eta decrease for more income from roids (HCT).
I pwetty much agree with all Bashar said (and am jsut repeating him in different words - bad me).
I would like to see more deep researches, like a few basic ships every race has, but after that you research specific ships for your race and even then there are several options to choose from. I'd like it if there is a set to choose from for each race, its probably hard to balance (don't ask me how, i can't make stats just give my opinion on them), but can be quite fun if done correctly. For example you have a FI-Research, CO-research, FR-research, DE-research, CR-research and BS research (with a slightlt faster research time ofc as each class now would have its own research), at each stage you'd have to decide which type of ship you'd want.
Each ship class characteristic would be the same (the ship class and its target), but depending on the type you choose you get a slightly different ship. At each class research you can make the descision again, option A or B, that way you could get a pure A fleet, pure B fleet or a mix between A and B.
For a Terran you could choose between the big expensive type ship, or cheaper, slighty weaker armoured and earlier firing ship.
With Cathaar the choice could be between EMP or normal kill ship
Xan could choose between having Cloaked or non-cloaked units (the cloak one being early fire weak armour, non cloak later fire better armour).
And Zik could choose between Steal and normal kill ship.
This is ofcourse a rough set and certainly not "well-thought-through" yet (and slightly off-topic), but i like the idea (in the right format) never the less
.