I've been modding almost 8 months now, and spent a little time on some of them, and lots of time on others, usually though i find myself reaching the end of a quick tweak and wanting to try something more ambitious. Problem is when i finish something long and involved i find myself wanting to have a quick game without all the extra things i just put in, in the way.

Justin and EvilJedi put together some modes, different tactics, different maps, different goals, it sounded like just the thing for getting a different game when the moods are quick and fast or slow and paced, or something where the stress is on getting something other than just getting beat or beating the game.

Demi-God has some interesting modes, different goals to load when you start a game, sounded very very interesting.

I've had some ideas, for modes, but wanted to talk to Justin and EvilJedi first to see what they think, and if it sounds feasible. So that is on hold for a bit, but i've got about 10 ideas for that. We will see though if any of it is worth it.

As to variable items in game - I've been looking at Sword of the Stars, and it is alot of fun, old graphics to be true, and more 4x than Sins, but some ideas strike me as very very interesting.

1.  I would like to find a way to vary which planet i start on.  (workable now with galaxyforge maps)

2.  And how many races i go up against. (workable now by selecting or locking out numbers of races on maps)

3. It would be nice to have resources scanty in one game and heavy in another (workable now with mods)

4. Or having a ton of research required, or little to none at all (workable now with mods)

5. It would be nice to have costs vary, i mean for a short game costs are low, for a longer or very long game it might be nice to have costs set high or very high. (also workable now with mods)

6. It would be cool to vary the number of militia or pirates light or heavy (also workable with mods)

7. Or have systems lightly or heavily populated without knowing how many ai's i'm going up against (randomness, which at present is displayed, so its not a blind press the key and jump into an unknown universe)

8. It would be nice to have "Different Universes" I suppose what i mean by that is where the game-play mechanics are different from game to game. Do i get tossed into a shadow universe, almost black where gravity is heavy and my ships speed is almost a crawl? Or poisonous planets where i cant land at all or lose my ships? (the speed thing and the poison thing can be done by modding planets with different abilities, or modding the ships speed directly)

9. It would be nice to include or exclude ships, so that each race has only 1 cap and 5 support ships, or a variety, or all, just like a normal game (all of these are possible with mods)

10. A randomized tech tree, that gives me different things and different numbers of items for each game. (can be modded)

11. What would be nice to have, is a menu, or slider, where each of these items, and others i havent thought of could be variable, so each game could be customized, heavy this, or light that, give me a ton of ships and no research or little amount of ships and research out the ears. I guess what i'm talking about is having something that customizes the game experience, stressing different things, or different goals from game to game, without having to build and load 27 different mods to get the effects im looking for. A beefed up version of the game editor would work, provided it added more fine control of other items, or galaxy forge if it was possible to build and launch a game fairly quickly. Options buttons and sliders for different things in the game will do that quickly and without having to mod each small detail for all the frigates or all of the capitals, or each planet or race i want to change.

12. Introducing an editor like this, or a pre-load launcher that sets up all the variables, or a random button that would give us an unknown number or kind of races, with short or long randomized tech trees would be very very very cool!! 

Well... that's it for the ideas, well... haha, not really, i suppose i will think of something tomorrow,    But all of this can be done right now, with mods, i guess what i'm asking for is whether we as a modding community, or the devs could come up with something that would let us do all of this, without spending weeks re-writing game values to get what we want for just a quick and fast game or well... to do something other than just battle it out game after game.

A game where i was a solo miner  with one ship building my fortune on a lone asteroid field out in space with randomized attacks by pirates would be interesting.  Or running trade goods back and forth between outposts with randomized attacks from police authority squads or pirates would be interesting. It would give us more and different things to do in the game, and that would be very very cool indeed.

Dont know of course what everyone else thinks, and i hate to just write a list and say this is what i want the game to be, im a rather active modder and hope i have contributed something interesing to the community and just wanted to post what i thought might be the next step to making a great game even greater. Just my opinions though,

Thanks for listening, take care and keep gaming and keep modding!!!

-Teal