Missions and Encounters

Unfortunately, play-testing opportunities are quite limited where I live. For the time I am basically limited to an occasional, "Hey friend, I know you don't really play this kind of game, but play a few turns to help me test something."

Anyway, here's a few more details of the game mechanics so far, and what I'm considering changing. I was trying to avoid making such a long post, but here goes...

Overall: Fly around the galaxy exploring and doing missions, upgrade your ship and items. Pretty open-ended. Collect VPs to win, or do tasks associated with saving the galaxy from the evil invading aliens for an alternate victory.

Turn structure:
1) Each player draws a random event card. Various game effects for this turn.
2) Players at a planet get to accept a mission, gain a new upgrade item from what happens to be available at the moment, or acquire a new ship.
3) Move around the board, complete missions, fight, land at a planet.

Exploration: Requires a scanner value greater or equal to the planet you are trying to explore. Various equipment contributes to scanner score. Certain sub-class of planets are considered 'extreme environments' and require an additional special item. Successful exploration will trigger an encounter of some sort.

Combat: Without going into to much detail, you basically alternate turns rolling a single die for every weapon you have, trying to beat your opponent's defense score, and the weapon gives you a bonus. Hits on your ship put various ship items out of commission. Generally, 1 weapon does 1 hit, and the target gets to pick where the damage goes, but EXTRA damage (critical hit) is picked by the shooter, and this is a hefty bonus effect. There are some special weapon properties such as, extra damage, spend energy for an added effect, etc.
The way you have constructed your ship, the special offensive and defensive effects, energy management, and the allocation of damage add some depth to what would otherwise be a straight-forward 'add your bonus and roll to beat my score' mechanic. Combat resolution is pretty quick, especially so in the early game.
Character-to-character combat (ground combat) is similar, but much simplified and much faster. Also used to defeat an aliens species during a planetary encounter.

Items: Deck of small cards, of which a random selection is available on a first-come, first-serve basis. Only available to a player when at an established colony. Random event cards will periodically reset what is currently available.

Missions: Currently handled just like items, and this duplicate mechanic doesn't work as well here. Also starts to become too many options for the player. I've tried tweaking this several ways, and it just seems broken.
Part of the issue, is that for items, generally a player knows what they are looking for, or the implications of a new particular items are pretty clear. New items come up, and it only take a couple seconds to process the info.
Whereas with the missions, it's a lot more fuzzy. The player has to find where on the map the mission is at, whether they meet the requirements to complete it, which they should do first, etc. It involves a lot more mental processing, and slows the game down. Especially so when the available ones get reset.
CONSIDERED CHANGE:
Missions are attached to specific planets. Players go there to accept it. Also, payers choose a planet they are at to become their current 'home base'. This will maybe confer some kind of special strategic ability or mission (Probably only allow 1 player at a time to claim a particular planet, and possibly have some way to oust a player.)
Randomness will come from which colonies have become unlocked via exploring, and possibly limiting some missions based on what other planets are unlocked. (Perhaps a cargo mission requires both ends to be unlocked, for example)
I want some kind of strategic interaction between what has been unlocked, what your special ability is, what missions are available, etc.

Encounters: Range from an alien species that needs to be conquered or befriended, to some kind of environmental disaster or hazard that needs to be fixed. Or the aliens may offer a mission that needs to be completed to pacify them. The choice of friends or foe was basically choosing a safe slow resolution vs. a risky quick resolution, also depending on equipment. Successful resolution will grant an artifact tech as a reward, as well as unlocking that planet.

Conquering: Character ground combat, as above. Possibly makes you criminal.
Befriending: Aliens have a social score. You must beat this number, adding in any beneficial social items you have.
This seems a bit lame, and is just another 'beat the score' mechanic but without all the other stuff that made the ship-to-ship combat interesting.
CONSIDERED CHANGE:
This area I'm more unsure of what to do here. Maybe some kind of 'required items/skill' to befriend? Like this alien requires skill A, another might require skill A, and B. Or maybe you have to gift them some commodity.
I think a conceptual change is in order too. Perhaps conquering should be the slower process? Like it has some risk, and you have to spend a few turns hunting all the hostile aliens, but you can be sure you will eventually prevail. Maybe negotiations require all sorts of specialized skills or items, but it is quicker and less riskier. Maybe it requires a task to be completed. Maybe the choice of friend or foe has some ramifications on the state of the planet after unlocking, as in what abilities/missions are available.
So when confronted with a difficult mission, a player might have to make a choice of whether to get bogged down in conquering, or try to gear up for the mission, or abandon the idea of unlocking this particular planet.

As far as randomness and re-playability, I could have the location of colony planets be random but with specific encounters, or the locations static and the encounters be random. I probably don't need both, and that may add too much complexity. Basically, I'm just looking for the 'field of play' to have different strategic implications from game to game.
Right now, I'm looking at fixed planets with random encounters.

Spore was a letdown for me as well.

It's good to bounce around ideas like this. While I was out getting a flat tire, I came up with some more social ideas.
What do think of having some kind of progression track where the player must accomplish 3 stages. First they have to pass intent, then common ground, and finally agreement. These could be listed on a social card.
They would roll, and if successful they could roll again on the next stage. If they fail a stage, then they have to wait until next turn to continue, but only have 2 turns to complete the track. If they can't even pass the first stage then the aliens have been offended and take you prisoner or something.
Improvement items could then do things like, grant you an extra turn, bonus to the roll, or start with a stage already completed. If you start with stage 1 complete then imprisonment is off the table, but maybe this would also require some kind of tribute. Similarly maybe an item has stage 2 complete but you still would have to pass stage 1 to get to it. Perhaps an ability gives you 1 reroll chance. I could even have some aliens be more or less difficult based on other things, like if the player is criminal, or has more or less VPs, or is associated with the main govt.
Possibly even make the progression track more varied, where a success or fail at any particular stage branches off, ultimately leading to different level rewards. Players may then weight speed vs. the ultimate goal. Do they want the better reward? Or are they just trying to unlock the planet?
If a player trys to conquer a species, then maybe they remain hostile for everyone. And then make a special ability to be able to bring them back to the negotiation table, so to speak.

Something like this could and more richness and variation, but I'll have to watch complexity.
Keep the brainstorms coming!