Ideas for asymmetry

I'm so glad to see that Sins II is coming along so fantastic.  It looks amazing and the gameplay is great, I can't wait to see the Advent and Vasari!

I've been thinking of ways to make the factions really stand out from each other in new ways based on playing in the current build.

Research:

I know a lot of folks have been clamoring for multiple simultaneous research tracks to speed things up.  My idea for research is to have the ability to research on multiple tracks simultaneously as a research able tech.

If you put the a research for the ability to research multiple techs in tier 2 or 3 it'd help with the issue of having a long backlog of researches late in the game.  Maybe even going so far as researching 3 techs at once at higher levels.

This presents and opportunity to diversify the factions as well, maybe Advent gets the 2 researches at level 2 and Tech gets it at level 3.  Alternately, they could make it so running simultaneous researches isn't as fast as running a single research and that speed can be improved by other researches.   This adds a way to make the factions play a bit differently, maybe Advent is able to research multiple things simultaneously earlier, but the speed debuff for doing that is higher.

Orbital Mechanics:

I love the addition of the planetary orbits.  It would be really cool if there were ways for the factions to manipulate the orbits of the planets to their advantage.

For example, if the Vasari got an ability to accelerate or decelerate a planet or asteroid's orbits, or change it's orbital distance to the star.  In my craziest dreams maybe a high level ability you can use to collide one planet into another, ya gotta admit that'd make a killer DLC!

The tech could take up surface slots, so if you want to build a mobile planet you can't also have the garrison fleets.

What ideas have you all had for things to spice up the differences between the factions?