Same here.

Me and shadow even made a mod to show that such things are VERY possible.

What about modes where planet exploration items become more frequent? Or where everyone starts off with 1 of each lab and say 4 techs already researched? Or everyone starts with their "worst cap" already built, and has to live with it or scuttle it?

My thoughts on your suggestions

1. Love it
2. Love it
3. This is a must
4. Meh
5. In general, more starting resource options would be great
   
6. Meh

As for no-rush, you'll have to be more specific.  What's stopping me from rushing in with a colony cap and taking a planet right out from under the enemy?  He can do nothing but watch as I fortify it and wait for the no-rush timer to expire.  Obviously the no-rush scenario needs some method to deal with the fact that players will be competing for the same planets, and since violent methods of conflict resolution are banned, some other method must be employed to prevent or resolve such disputes.  If such a method doesn't exist, it just becomes a stupid game passive-aggressive bullshit where the goal is to try to steal planets out from under the enemy and box them in before the no-rush timer expires.

But sometimes players are only 4 or 5 jumps from each other; you might not even have to purposefully go out of your way to take a planet your opponent is eying up.  It's easy to say "deal with it", but if your enemy arrives at the desert planet you're clearing out and gets his Akkan within range first, you'll probably change your tune immediately.

I propose a mixture with elements from MoO II, the pirate system and the orignal homeworld, I preliminiarily call it: bounty hunters.

like with the antarans in MoO, you will be attacked throught the game by very powerful, very advanced forces. you might beat them, but they are tough and bind resources. like sins pirates, however, they can be appeased. basically, they demand a token of respect and appeasement, otherwise they attack you from the void of space anywhere in force. however, there is no auctioning or some such. I'd say, for fairness, all players in the game should become targets equally.

the other part is: since your resource income just would not suffice to build an empire, armada and meet the rising demands of the aliens, there is a second way to gain resources: bounties. this means you cannot stabelise, you cannot bunker, you have to go out and kill enemies, conquer territory, subjugate enemies. otherwise, you will sooner than later not be able to buy yourself off and be sloughtered by the aliens.

so, the whole thing comes down to having to play even more aggressivley. fight or die. and it would become a bit faster, shorted I'd presume, since players are taken out one by one, last man standing style sort of.

alternatively, you could make it much simpler and say that every half hour or so, the weakest player gets eliminated. the problem here is determining exactly who the weakest player is (income? fleet size? research?) and whether the elimination should just hard or soft like the above system in that he meets a force that stronger players can handle, whereas he cannot. think of it as poker where the blinds keep getting higher which eventually makes it extremely hard to weaker players to stay in the game.