Mmm. Red Horizon was fun, yes.
There were a few irritating things about it that I still think about from time to time that I really would prefer not to see continue in a new game though.
For example:
- No gigantic cloaking station/fleet belonging to Black Lance and Towlyn. I realize that was mostly to address the ruling that the Confederation had 'lost' against the Kilrathi (which left the Confederation with one very demoralized light carrier to fight the Kilrathi fleet), but it felt silly. Even more so when the Behemoth was added in...then promptly misfired th e only time it was used and was destroyed. Why bother, really?
And if Confed had tech like that, wouldn't it have made more sense to mass produce it during wartime? Black Lance was a small covert ops unit for a reason in canon.
- A UBW that is a partner or neutral rather than a haven for pirates who raid Confed facilities. From WCIV we saw that they didn't have a great relationship with the Confederation, but it often felt like the UBW were as much enemies as the Kilrathi, and I never saw evidence that the Union supported criminals, so much as being a bit lenient on not asking questions about where gear was acquired. I'm all for independence with the UBW, but it was like the leaders there never really cared that if Confed fell, they'd be all alone against the Kilrathi. The funny part was, by the time Tolwyn took over and led the Confed into happy fascist land to invade the UBW, there weren't many characters left who weren't perfectly willing to go along with it based on the Union's past actions.
- NO SIVAR. Fine for a religion, but when Sivar literally manifested several times to intervene in events...c'mon. Unless Buddha, Thor, Gabriel, or someone similar gets to pop in to protect the poor Terrans...but it's best to leave Kilrathi mythological figures mythological and focus on the politics of the priesthood rather than introducing magical interdimensional beings into a sci fi game.
- Kilrathi that had the advantages that are canon...that being extremely large production and a ready supply of pilots, versus the Terran's lower numbers but better tech. The Kilrathi did have some cool toys...the cloaking bombers and the Sivar class dreadnought, for example. But when they have the same or better tech, massive resources, superior numbers...after a while it gets hard to suspend disbelief about why the Terrans aren't crushed. Even if it's only RP'd, this would be a nice touch. Could possibly be a matter of Kilrathi losses being replaced almost immediately while Terrans have to wait a certain period to get replacements for fighters or ships. Perhaps a bonus to Kilrathi pilots to represent that they're generally veterans due to constant warfare at the start of chargen.
- leave the civilian government NPC. I still cringe at the memory of the aborted attempt at creating a PC'd Senate for political RP. (seriously? We're in the middle of a war and the first action of the Senate is to suspend ALL MILITARY FUNDING because they want to investigate where Tolwyn got his money for the Black Lance?) Better to leave the Presidency and Senate in the hands of the RP admin as sources of plottage.
So...those are things that irritated me on the old mush.