Another sugestion for this game would Tug Ship functions such as pulling astroids and spacestations to new sectors as well as shipyards (http://star-made.org/content/shipyard-0). They could be put on the back of ships as energy lines with energy ancors on the object you are trying to pull. This could be used as a way for fractions to build up there their homebases. This could also be used as a way to tether spacestacions to planets. The energy lines could be used as a way to conect explosive clusters together so that they do not drift.