This is a long post so please bare with me
I don't know about the rest of you but there seems to be more that can be done with the space stage. Where as a lot of you have gone for the whole 'let us invade planets etc' I was thinking of a different idea.
The first I was thinking of was the implementation of Governors. Once your empire has reached a certain size, maybe about 20 or so systems, you could appoint a Governor to a system. Their pupose would be to deal with pirate attacks, terraform their planet to a reasonable standard, rebuild and destroyed buildings/turrets and pass on spice production directly to the main coffers.They would have some arbitrary options like 'Allowed to reconstruct. Allowed to terraform.' for example.
They would have an initial cost to place but would reduce a lot of the messin about involved with going back and forth doing the menial tasks of the space stage. To make them more balanced they could also take a percentage of the spice produced per shipment. For example, if the planet can only produce '5' the Governor would wait until it is reached capacity and then send '4' to the homeworld and the cycle restarts. When the planets can sustain more spice the percentage would obviously get bigger (if it makes 10, only 8 would be sent on etc). Other upgrades could come from this as well like having 'Jump Gates' or something similar to decrease the time it takes for spice production between systems and the homeworld.
Also, whenever they are attacked and things are destroyed, reconstruction costs would come directly out of the main funds at 10 minute intevals so you know when to expect an expenditure to occur, rather than have to go back and do it yourself all the time.
Once your empire gets to a size of say 50 or maybe a higher number of systems, the System Governors would no longer be required and instead have Regional Governors that control say 5 or 10 systems each, and have the same sort of thigns happen before. It would just make things easier for the player.
As they are a purchasable thing, it would give the player the option to micromanage if they want or if they want to get down to experimenting, fighting wars and making alliance/doing mission etc, they can do without having to put up with housekeeping. Also, them being an unlockable after a certain size of empire, means the player has to do all the arbitrary things at first and the Governors are a reward for doing that.
They could even have names as Spore already comes with a random name generator for system names, it could just apply it to these.
It could also stem other missions for the player as they may have to deal with rebellious Governors so they can go and quash an uprising/separatist system or have to deal with Governors who want bigger percentages and the player has to decide what happens. The Governors could also steal extra spice and the player has to work out if they are and that gives them an incentive to check their homeworld more often, then decide what to do with the Governor.
My next idea stems from the idea of Governors directly sending spice to the homeworld. Having a stock market screen. We already know that spore can and does vary the BUY/SELL prices of the different colours of spice so this would be just a simpler method of putting all this information in once place for the player to decide where to sell their produced spice. You would still have to take that spice to the world you want to sell it at though.
To balance this, it would only show you the rates for your own systems so their may be better deals with your allies and/or other species. So it means it gives you the option of making an informed decision of where to go but if you want to rake in the really big bucks you will have to go directly to other empires. To balance this further, this could be a purchasable placement/upgrade for your homeworld like the spice storage or satelliete turret, that is unlockable after reaching a certain badge level of the trader badge or similar. This would force the player to play the game a fair bit first.
The last idea I have is that of a random news generator, which stems from the Governor idea. It would just be a screen available from the homeworld system where you can look at things that have been happening in your empire such as pirate attacks, ecological disasters, new systems, how wars are going etc. This could also be a good way of judging how your Governors are doing for example, if an ecological disaster has occured and it wasn't resolved and keeps happening, it might be a sign to either replace the Governor, or give him a bigger percentage of the spice etc. To balance this, it could also be a purchasble upgrade called the Interstellar News Service or something similar.
All of these ideas in my opinion would just provide the player with greater choice, increased information that is more efficiently presented, greater immersion and atmosphere and lets the player get on with doing some of the more fun aspects of Spore like experimenting, exploring and warring etc rather than all their time being taken up with chores. However, at the same time, they are rewards for playing the game how Maxis released it orginally. To add finally, I dont think they would be massively difficult to implement as a lot of it is just random generators with a few control lalalalala and/or merging data that is currently being produced by Spore into a more accessible format, but still gives the option of having to look after everything yourself if you wanted.
Thanks for reading....if you made it this far
All comments are very welcome.