Just a thought, i know.... another one!! Haha... well... i tried to add a fourth weapon to one of the TEC Capitals, and it failed. I suppose it has something to do with the front/back/right/left weapon points, but to be honest i dont know. But was thinking if we had just a top/bottom addition it would of course give us another 4 slots to work with.
Example: Top/Front, Bottom/Front, Top/Back, Bottom/Back, Top/Right, and Bottom/Right and Top/Left and Bottom/Left.
Weapon damages could be halved from what they are now, if that is a concern to not overpower the ships.
In addition, the UI slots available for Abilities are maxed at 4 right now, ... unless i am missing something, which is quite possible. But it would be interesting to have "Sets" of Abilities. They could even be tied to Levels if you like, to have one set of Abilites used for Support, another for Attack, another for Counter-Intelligence (Cloaking? Sub-space Radar? Others...) and perhaps One for Research, so each ship could be researched separately? Hmmm.... I like the idea of having not a total tech tree tied to how many screens i have for military or civilian, but rather ship upgrades that are activated on each ship, from a menu inside the ship framework. In this way, we could have as many upgrades as we want, without worrying if we have enough pages for them. It may be possible of course to list them textually as well, not to say the icons aren't nice, because they are, but if we had a 'list' of available upgrades (perhaps by type) then we could color code those activated or in use, against those remaining to be upgraded or activated. This could do away with the screen research pages for perhaps another use, or removed and the interface could be smaller or cleaner?
Anyway... these are just thoughts, no doubt more trouble than not, but just wanted to throw them out for consideration, in case something is worthwhile. 
Keep Gaming and Modding!!
Sincerely,
-Teal