i had an idea similar to this a while back. but, instead of one time rewards, i adopted and modified a system used by some other games. When you get an achievement, you get a prefix, or a full title that you could use. The titles then gave either hard bonuses to the player's ship, or, when you got a bit further towards the end, they would give percentage increases, or special abilities. For example, the 'achievement' system we have in this game is the combat rep. The combat rep would be replaced with the title of whatever the person chose, specifically to identify what they were known for in the game. For example, if you did alot of NPCing (as most people do) you would unlock say, Contract Killer. This would give a bonus 500 NPC attack (for say, 50000 NPC kills). This could be paired with your combat rep, which could also give a damage bonus, say 2% for Insane. This would give you the title of 'Insane Contract Killer', which would give your ship bonuses. On the opposite side of the spectrum, say you do alot of missions, and you hack alot. Missions would give you the title, say, Political (because your solving problems 'politically' instead of just blasting enemy ships) which would give you a scan bonus. whereas, if you hacked alot of people, you would gain the title 'Infiltrator', which would give a bonus to cloak. All of these titles would be interchangeable, and would cost, say 15 energy to reset your title (a rather insignificant amount once you start unlocking a bunch of titles). Other 'secret' titles would be unlocked, which would give special bonuses, like the title 'Warmaster' which would be obtained for getting 1000 player kills, and 100000 NPC kills. This would be a very difficult title to get, obviously, and would provide a 2% damage increase, along with a special skill we can call 'Luck' or 'Advanced Energy Signature Scanning' which would increase the chance to find uncommons, rares, and elites.
This can be combined with your idea of adding an additional unlock bonus when the title is gained. This would function as 'new content' (even if its only rewarding the player for doing things theyre already doing) and adding an additional level of customization to the game, which most players enjoy. However, i do agree the rewards may need to be ramped up. If you hack 1000 people, i would expect a reward close to 250k research (a massive amount at low ranks, which would dramatically improve their ship, a 'medium' amount for higher ranks, especially when the base tech theyre researching costs 5 million research per tier (dimensional logistics, of which i'm still stuck on
)). i do however LOVE your idea for disable 1000 enemies. it would save a ton of energy for those who do it, and also make courtesy (or douchey) messages post for players that dont regularly post them. I'm not crazy about specific NPC disables, as many NPCs are unable to be seen by all players. If it was just NPC kills, or NPC elite kills, i could understand. but the dark ring, laz fab plant, etc. i dont really want to see. For troop carriers, i think a quasi-spacial expander may be a better reward than an omnibase, as thats what i'm after when i kill troop carriers. plus, if your not lucky getting them, it will allow players to expand their exotic up to a very massive once you gain the 10 terraformers for the exotic mission. Other than that, youre on the right track (imo anyway) i especially like the 'method of madness' module you have listed. but i think a 15% xp bonus would be better. double xp would mean players would be getting 16-38 xp per hit on an enemy ship, for 5 energy. which... is amazing. a 15% xp boost would be like having a neural up while pvping that couldnt be wiped, which would be nice.