It'd be great to be able to capture stars with ground troops but I'm not sure how the AI would handle that. I do want to mess around and test that feature but I probably won't have time until like October to look into that. I was wondering if you unload a troop onto a defenseless star it will capture it.
Another idea for that is to make the 8 squares around stars something other than space (like call it solar system, but still act the same as space). Then the ground troops could be set to move in solar system but not in space, that way you could transport and unload them, capture the star with your troops, and it would be cool!
An update on the minimod:
I've finished adding lots of new things for minimod 2.0. Lots of other things I wanted to add but I couldn't because the features require to be coded into each building and i didn't want to do that yet. So far I just want to change XMLs.
-New Victories:
-Orion Victory: Build 10 Orion gate pieces to win.
-Value Victory: Spread founded value to 75% of galaxy
-Commerce Victory: Needs scripting to work
-Antarian Victory: Needs scripting to work
-New Buildings
-Megafluxers: National wonder, +10 XP
-Cloning Center: +10% food
-Telepathic Traning Center: +50%? Espionage
-Microbiotics: +1 Pop
-Psionics Center: +10% espionage, +1% everything
-New Promotions
-Time Warp Facilitator: blitz
-Gyro Destabalizer: promotion against larger ships
-Rangemaster Targeting Unit: +first strikes
-Quantum Detonator: +100% Kamikaze Attack, resist capture
-Antarian (barbarian trait promotion): -80% heal, -1 movement, +50% Kamikaze, +200% experience
-New Techs
-Evolutionary Mutation: Free tech, health & happiness
-New Units
-Inquisitor: Removes non-state values from stars, from the Thomas War mod. (needs scripting to work)
Now I just intend to spread out the civics from the tech tree, re-balance the units and promotions and release it.
I agree with Deon that the Sociology tree should be removed, and techs do need moved around and cleaned up but I won't get around to that this spring. I've got a huge list of stuff to test and play with and change but I won't get much of that done. I mostly just want to release this version of the minimod, patch up the bugs and make some tweaks then I will start into my summer job. I won't be able to mod so much then because of lack of time and lack of internet but I still want to follow along and see what developments come about during the summer. With all these script fixes and changes I don't see a point in me changing the XMLs further until the other changes are made anyway.