Welcome JayManHBD and thanks for all the information. Give me some time to digest all this.

Again welcome, it sure is a pleasure to have you here JayMan. I would like to know more about your background. It sounds like you may have some professional connection to all this information. Thanks for the links to all the great images and info. I hope that most of your suggestions can be implemented.

Here are the few qualifiers I can offer:
I could not help but recall a compromise I had to make a while back. In working on ship movement for the 3D combat engine I had to give up physics for the conversions of current science fiction. Both Star Trek and Star Wars have space ships making banking turns as if they were aircraft. It is as wrong as you can get but it is a conversion I cannot ignore. In that regard I think we will have to accept the concept of Jungle planets and Desert Planets with humanoids on them.

The idea of rogue planets my help us get out of one game balancing issue. A problem was created then colonization of other than rogues was made the case for The Dominion. In a small game galaxy The Dominion often is completely without a place to use their colony ships.

I understand that it can be quite hot inside some of the nebula and that should be a way for some rogues to keep from death by ice. Our Dominion home world is in a nebula and they are not humanoid.

I thought the fix for the wrong sizes of Venus and Mars was implemented a few years back but I guess it slipped back in somehow.

A planetary nebula, more correctly known as a stellar remnant nebula, is an emission nebula consisting of an expanding hot glowing shell of ionized gas ejected from the central star and then further heated by it's stellar remnant.

Radiation from the central star heats the gases to temperatures of about 10,000 K. The gas temperature in central regions is usually much higher than at the periphery reaching 16,000–25,000 K. The volume in the vicinity of the central star is often filled with a very hot (coronal) gas having the temperature of about 1,000,000 K. This gas originates from the surface of the central star in the form of the fast stellar wind.

Here is a question for JayMan: Could a rogue planet passing through an emission nebula be heated enough to be hospitable by radiation from the nebula while not being captured, remaining a rogue, to orbit by any remnant star?

Hi JayMan, welcome to the forums. Great post!
I had typed this huge reply to your post, but the forums screwed it up. And yes, I had copied the text before replying.
Anyway, most of the issues you describe are actually covered in the game; some might not be very perceptible, but they're there. I'll try to recreate the post (or a simplified verion of it) later on, when I get the time.
Thanks for the feedback!

It puzzles me how you can talk about imbalances when you guys were membering minors left and right, and using them to build ships like there's no tomorrow. I posted a few "rules" we could observe in order to get a sense of "balance"; did you use them? I guess not.
I also told you a couple of times how to play the Dominion in small maps with no minors - which let's face it, that's not how we're going to play the game, is it? Everyone wants minors, and you're playing without them? ...
Like I mentioned a few times already, minors will be hard to get. The Dominion will member them or conquer them. Just like they're supposed to. Build stations to increase your range.
Also notice that when we get the option to turn off the quadrants, the Dominion will not be isolated in the GQ. It'll be right in the middle of it.

Be patient, and please try to be more careful with how you put things. It doesn't help.

I was thinking the Dominion could build land bases, like military/scientific outposts, trading bases, mining complexes, building bases or Jem'Hadar breeding grounds. We could limit the selection in each system by putting prerequisites for building a certain base (raw materials/dilithium for mines, crystalline or gas giants for science, terran/jungle for breeding or simple military and communications land outpost available in every system)

They would clam the system as Dominion space, AoI would depend on the type of base (military and trade -3; breeding, industrial -2; other -1) But there wouldn't be any population, just an icon marking what type of base was it, System assault would be based on it's HP, could be similar to normal assault. And they would have fix outputs in credits/dilithium/raw materials/research/... or would be able to build ships...etc

This would negate the Dominion's lack of research/mining/trade disadvantage from the lack of colonies, specially during the early phases of the game and it would uncripple the Dominion's expansion on non-minor games (even after AI is implemented) but would be different enough to be a fun race to play.

Well yeah...Dominion itself has no real colonists. The Jem'Hadar are bred as the warriors, Vorta are cloned to be officers/ambassadors and the Founders are leaders on the homeworld.

Only new systems the Dominion would control in a classic style would be new members or conquered races...colony expansion would be replaced with the land base type as described before...and all are happy

Like in BotF, when you subjugate a system, you don't change the inhabiting race. So the Founders will not live in a subjugated system; also notice that it's the Jem'Hadar that do all the invading, not the Founders, and they don't have the Founders' restriction. The Founders basically don't live outside Rogue planets in the game.

As a side note, currently the native race of the Dominion is still set to be the Jem'Hadar, so when you colonize a new system, it'll be the Jem'Hadar populating it. Only The Great Link is actually inhabited by the Founders.

Any thoughts on my solution for the Dominion? Or will it just be put aside?

We have discussed a few things about the Dominion in the private forum, in the thread entitled... Dominion You've participated in it too.
The plan at this point (and it can obviously be adapted or changed if deemed necessary) is to have the Dominion colonize only Rogue planets. Like already mentioned, they are supposed to expand by setting up trade with minors and having them join as members; they have the buildings for that. They can also subjugate and build stations like any other empire. They have bonuses to mining and shipbuilding, so that they can churn out ships fast, and good morale and credits production. Their attack ships are cheap, and they don't have dedicated strike cruisers, but have excelent ground combat capabilities. Since they're alone in the Gamma Q, hey won't be competing much for minors, and they can get research from anomalies if that's implemented. They'll be strong in espionage and sabotage, which is still being implemented. They might have their weapons bypass (partially or completely) shields, but that's not yet determined - obviously some balancing will have to be achieved.

Start a game at Supreme tech level and take a look at their stuff in the Encyclopedia. It should give you an idea of their playstyle. Notice that since the Native race is still the Jem'Hadar, there are structures you won't be able to build in The Great Link.