I have been playing and testing this game with and without mods, I still wonder why you haven’t included for instance SINS Plus in one of your upgrades? Maybe tweak but it fits your game.
Reading across your boards here I can see that I like many of the suggestions. But I do lack the suggestion of changing the artifact some. Since once finding an artifact gives you a bonus directly and losing the same artifact gives a loss of the tech advantages.
I would like to see an advantage in when you find the artifact then you get the option to research different levels of advantages for as long as you hold the planet that has the artifact. Whatever level of tech you research you keep even if you loss the artifact.
An extra request:
Then of course you can see that the different races have different tech why isn´t it possible to capture some of the other races tech and research that? That would add depth to the game and all for the research for longer match and much more advance technology. Would make for much more exiting battles since you don’t want to destroy some of the infrastructure and ships of the enemy since you want to capture and reveres engineer it.
Anyway that is my 2 öre for now!