Hi,
I'm working on a mini mod, i call it "The Last War". It was originally "Last of the Advent" but i carried the idea through to include the other races and basically consists of a future 50 years from now, when the Advent, Tec and Vasari are almost completely destroyed. The Advent have a single Capital Carrier with a smattering of Abilities and a Scoutship and a MobileDefense for the Gravwell. The Tec have three Capitals and support ships, but no way to colonize. It was an idea that happened almost by accident while i was in the playertech.entity file trimming the ships. The Vasari have 4 Capitals, but no support ships and no scouts, and no planet protection.
All set in a dark future map with 64 planets, mostly asteroids and space junk, uninhabitable planets and a smattering of habitable worlds in a red star system.
I have altered the metal/crystal output to almost nothing, and the count down to almost nothing. Which means buying anything beyond the first rush is almost nil.
Haha... sounds morbid maybe, but its dark and different, and i figured maybe different enough to be fun. 
Anyway, i am crashing the mod on trying to remove the research and planetmodules, so if anyone knows a safe way, could you please let me know? And also, i am trying to find an artist that might like to "repaint" the advent and vasari and tec ships like the ones in Danman's 7 Deadly Sins Derelict Ships. Maybe i can copy the textures over from the tech ships in 7DS to the other ships and give credit to Danman and company, but I dont know what kind of editor i need, or can i simply copy the "data" from one file to another in a text editor?
Anyway, any help would be much appreciated.
Take care and keep modding!! 
-Teal