The request here being of course an improvement to existing features, rather than new ones.
If you’ve got a complaint about Proteus features you do not like, this is the place to rant and hopefully find a solution to that particular feature. Please let me know why any of my solutions won’t work 
In a different thread it was brought up that currently existing features are a deterrent to some players. So I will address these with my own solutions and post it as a new thread to encourage discussion.
These were the features that were pointed out:
1: it is not enjoyable to have carrier price stack like it does. Not only is that the farthest thing from how industry actually works, but it is annoying as I’ll get out. I would not play for that reason alone. The carriers should just be more expensive or something, honestly.
I agree with this, I remember my first Proteus game when I built my second carrier for twice the price thought “really? wth, that’s dumb 
” then realized it was a flat increase and was a little more ok with it but to this day feel like the increase is too fast. I do like the idea of it increasing but as was pointed out, it should be a little more realistic.
My Workaround (a.k.a. how I dealt with this annoyance):
I no longer loop ships. In Triton I will have 2 or more ships jumping between a pair of stars constantly moving my ships toward the front lines. In Proteus, when I have need to move ships faster, I began to kamikaze my carriers into the enemy and just build new ones keeping my ship count as low as possible so they’re not too expensive. This kind of works, but it requires I be a lot more attentive and can make me easily just sit there while nothing is happening which is bad.
My Solution:
As was pointed out, industry doesn’t just increase in cost because an empire gets bigger. It does however increase when greater technologies are introduced as implementation of said technologies can sometimes require a major overhaul of infrastructure/materials/logistic changes. So instead of cost being directly affected by number of carriers (x*25), how about making the price be affected by Technology?
I had a few ideas on this:
Attaching it to a static tech, the problem of course being some techs eventually get ignored and others won’t make sense for building carriers.
Averaging the techs and using that number to calculate the price, this either gives weird prices, formulas that aren’t simple or a very slow increase.
The one I liked best however is to attach it to the highest tech level. Once x is determined by whatever tech is the highest, the formula could be a simple (x-2)*25. This means you would be improving your carriers with weapons/cost (banking/manufacturing)/engines (range)/experimental tech/scanning (radar). In a typical Proteus game, this means your cost will increase up to a few times a day and still allows for some strategic coordination to not have them be too expensive but not give a huge advantage either. The rationalization there being that all these improvements are going to increase the cost of production and makes it more realistic than simply “it costs more because you already have some” unless of course the increased cost is due to storage requirements 
(hangar expansion and land purchases along with possible relocations and renovations).
- Last I checked, there was a change to this, but back in the original Proteus, weapons benefits to defenders was overwhelming. Offensives were too difficult. Whoever won a star usually never lost it if they were smart. So it favored lucky aggressors FAR more than defenders. I play aggressively. It’s good strategy and so the game ruled out my entire reason to play by this concept alone. Thankfully I think it’s gone, but the damage is still done from the expensive carrier issue.
This is definitely gone, there is no defense bonus at all. Only first strike. Hopefully carriers get improved.
3: Star experience. I think this is a thing and actually makes conquering a star harder. This too, may have been something I vouched for or even requested. And it was a stupid thing if so, because it does not work well. It makes conquering stars even harder.
This is thankfully not a thing.
4: Tech pricing… Thank GOD for the ledger. Because I cannot make heads or tales of the price scaling and it just makes trading awkward as can be.
Not just the ledger, a dropdown has been added to show what tech up to lvl 20 will cost. The price scaling is covered in the help section, but it’s better with the dropdown.
5: Alliances. For some reason I’ve never had good interactions with other players in the game. It is usually more ruthless in a lonely way. That is not good at all. Diplomacy should be important.
This isn’t really a Proteus feature but I find that just being straightforward and open with your alliance about your plans is good enough. Communication really, and try to avoid allowing emotions getting the better of you or your allies.
6: It’s uglier. Screw cell phones. I hate them as it is and they suck up too much time. Really are “Cell” phones, mental prisons. Catering to that crowd is a smart business move on Jay’s part, but the current Proteus is down right hideous to look at. I still remember fondly the gorgeous interface of the original Neptune’s Pride. Triton is cuter, but at least it isn’t bland.
Maybe Jay could provide templates for users to customize and submit for approval?
Or maybe Jay could allow for members to volunteer their services in these types of areas.
7: Game mechanics. Nothing about them works for me. It is like a 4x speed game on steroids. Back in the old days, when I was more free and could literally sit there all day with nothing better to do, sure, that might work. But with how Proteus is now… I still can’t comprehend how to enjoy something that requires constant attention and careful resource micromanagement. A beauty of NP2 is that I need not log on continuously during early to mid stages of the game. Proteus’ mechanics in this regard are all over the place for me. This is more a personal gripe though. I honestly don’t think it is a genuine flaw…
It’s possible your approach is making it seem speedier. I find the pace to be very slow. In the early stages I just make sure to log in at least once a day, usually 2 or 3. It’s usually 3 or 4 days before I feel the need to pay real attention to the game and some games I go a day or 2 without logging in and still do well. I do plan at least 24 hours worth of actions before I ignore the game (with the exception of day 1 which only let’s you plan ~8 hours worth of moves) and if I return early it’s just to make sure things are going as planned, to spend my savings and to see if anything needs changing. For the most part though I have felt that Proteus is slower than Triton (except for the money management). In Triton mistakes feel more lethal whereas Proteus seems easier to recover from and even the warp gates don’t offer much advantage until your range is in the double digits. If you ever decide to try it again I’d be more than happy to join a game together and compare notes to see what we’re doing differently.
8: The tech, though, IS a flaw. It renders falling behind in tech a brutal and pointless waste in futility. Might as well quit at once, as far as I’ve seen.
I think I’m beginning to see your problem >.>
In case I’m wrong though, would you mind expanding on how the tech is flawed?
I have played games where I focused on something like Range/Scanning while my Opponent did Weapons/Manufacturing and I came out on top because of the way the map was rendered it gave more advantage to travel farther and see attacks coming than to being stronger. I’ve also had the reverse be true. I find taking a moment to really look at the map and plan your worst-case scenarios go a long way to determining what you should research and what you shouldn’t. Sometimes it’s fine to get behind in a tech as long as you’re getting ahead in another.
9: wormholes. The idea is awesome. And I may even have been instrumental in suggesting that idea too. They seemed to smart. And yet they are implemented terribly. I know what Jay’s going for, but to me, there is no reason to spend 24 hours moving somewhere unless it is to set up a Scanning Outpost at an ally’s system. It links the galaxy, but it ruins it because you can see other players moving back and forth and that in turn removes some of the secrecy, certainly lets you know when enemies are moving large quantities of ships. It is also slow… way too slow. If that’s changed by now since I last played, then good, because it was awful otherwise.
It’s still 24 hours, but I’ve noticed a lot of players seem to forget that you can build warp gates on them and reduce that time to 12 hours. I’ve done plenty of expansion through a wormhole, it’s not the easiest thing to do, in one game I was in a player defended their wormhole against 3 other players for maybe 6 weeks because they were not familiar with wormholes and didn’t understand the travel costs and strategies that go along with long-range attacking.
I do feel they’re too random and have more than once had the misfortune of 4 wormholes leading to my empire behind my main defenses making it almost impossible to survive without some clever diplomacy.
10: Warp gates: again, useless. Suddenly, despite needing to get on constantly for the hourly income, warp gates do not work as they did in NP2. It seems to me we might as well have none of them at all. They just weren’t worth it anymore, being too expensive and granting a very marginal boost most of the time. They did not even work with wormholes.
They do work with wormholes, a lot players don’t do it though, probably because of the cost.
The boost for warp gates really comes in handy later in the game, you usually can’t afford them early on anyway, but they are critical in the end-game. I’ve seem the top of the leaderboard drop quickly when they don’t get their warp gates right.
11: Carriers get experience but last I heard that doesn’t do anything. Why? Stars seem to gain experience or did during the beta test I played (I think. I don’t pretend to be the brightest star out there, so it wouldn’t surprise me if I got confused on this point). Point being though, considering carriers are at a premium, it would have been more sensible if their experience did something. But then considering what happened with the stars getting it, I would think this is a bad idea all around, too.
Right, bonuses are difficult to balance, but should be ok if kept simple. I’ve seen some of the suggestions that make the ships overpowered, I do like the suggestion of just granting the carrier the ability to scan. It always seemed silly to me that my carrier was technically flying blind, you’d think the captain of the ship would relay information or at the least have windows or radar on the carrier.
12: No terraforming. Jay prefers this, and I have to agree, so this is not a complain per se… yet even so, I’ve noticed empires that don’t grow fast in Proteus die a swift death. So there needs to be SOMETHING done.
I think that’s true for Triton as well. At least in the larger games it is, if you don’t grow, your opponent just rolls over you, unless your allies are helping you survive, but that’s kind of universal, you don’t grow, you die.
One thing I have noticed is map rendering can sometimes be so unfair in Proteus. So many times I see someone start with their empire split in 2 needing range 4 before they are able to travel between their own stars. That definitely needs to be changed. It makes half your stars practically undefendable. These players rarely survive despite best efforts and that just sucks.