I have had a few ideas I'd like to add to my TI3-some I can do on my own but some may require manufacturing assistance. Anyway wondering what other people think:

1) Ggrucoto Rinn, one of the reps for the Xxcha, is basically useless. I thought a great ability for him (and for the turtles in general) would be the ability to add a rider to the Political card presented. That is, the Xxcha player can add one of his Political Cards as a rider and select an outcome (ie. if its an Elect Player he can select the player). If the outcome of the card presented (the one being voted on) is the same as how the Xxcha voted, then the rider also passes. I think this will give the Xxcha much greater Turtle Power in the Political arena, which is where it should be, and this would make for some very interesting votes. Of course I imagine this Councilor would get assassinated fairly early on, but at least he'd see some game time as he's practically useless. I would add this to my own game but need to be able to make the card exactly the same as the other reps so people can't tell when I'm playing the custom one...

2) Blank artifacts - I had the idea that the blank artifact tokens could allow the discovering player the chance to choose from a selection of Unique structures. They wouldn't be worth points but would have game benefits for whoever controlled them. A couple ideas: A defense grid that acts as a permanent minefield for whomever controls the system, or an arena where Ground Forces can try and upgrade to Shock Troops, or an automated factory which can repair damaged ships at the end of a combat round.

3) Unique infantry/ships for each race! Actually I'm already working on this for myself via 3D printing. Costly but I bet if they were mass manufactured and sold as separate packs (ie could buy an Arborec pack or a Yin pack) a lot of people would be willing to buy their favorite races.

4) Secondary Leaders. Unique leaders who provide secondary benefits (ie. a leader who can add +1 production to the planet they're on, a leader who can allow a rep to be sent to a vote if first rep is killed, or who can vote in lieu of, etc).

Let me know what you think and if you have any other ideas!

PS - How can I delete a post?

Re: making your own cards, you might want to check out this tutorial:

http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/490643/making-cards-youll-never-use-your-old-method-again

It sounds like an expensive process to me (and I haven't had much luck with gluing multiple sheets together myself,) but the results are undeniably awesome.

Now, making sure the colours match on the back of the card is going to be another story. There's no guarantee that the printer you use will make exactly the same colours as the printers FFG uses, so there may be some slight differences in hue or tone.

The rest sound like cool ideas in general. I don't know about the legalities of selling your own 3D printed units in packs, though. I mean, if they're your own designs then FFG can't really stop you from producing them. You wouldn't be able to call them "TI3 Arborec Ship Pack" on your packaging, though, because then you'd be leveraging a trademark you don't own.

You could call it "Generic Plant-Based Alien Species Ship Pack" and suggest that they would work well in "many popular sci-fi board games" though. And if they happen to come in sets that perfectly duplicate the amount of plastic in a TI3 player set, well, that's just terribly convenient, isn't it?

(Disclaimer: Steve-O is not a lawyer. You may want to seek professional legal council before entering into a proper commercial manufacturing enterprise. Setting aside any concerns about FFG's trademarks, I'm sure there are a million other legalities to consider when producing something like this on a vaguely commercial scale.)

PS - How can I delete a post?

You can't.

You could always sleeve all your representatives (or only the Xxcha ones) and simply insert a new front for that specific one. That way the backs are still the same.