Would be nice to have more control over the planets you take. Ie/ You can decide you want an urban sprawl and watch as the planets surface slowly turns into a huge city. Obviously there'd be certain advantages and disadvantages associated with it.

of course I do not know what scale you are talking about, but I'm pretty sure there will be a handful of new research topics.

for example to unlock those new ship classes, maybe a few things associated with starbases, then definately the various upgrades for gauss canons, hangars and their counter parts and the other new additions such as minefields and subspace inhibitor. it will not be a whole new research tree, but there is definately some new techs in the game with entrenchment based on what I read.

btw. the third mini exp. was said to include more new ships, techs and stuff too, so you could look forward to that as well.

As to how much processor power it would take:   hmmm.... seems you can have low res graphics for low end machines and high res for high end. Just like they do now with the graphics in game. It shouldn't be any different. Just add some new graphics, keep them low and on my low end machine i should be fine. I mean, i know its low res, but it still looks pretty good to me. When I get to upgrade the machine, which for real probably wont be for another couple years, but still, when i do, then it should be even more cool than now. 

-Teal