MOO2 had random research costs (100%-200% the stated cost) but I never heard of people cheating like that... then again I never even thought of the idea so I wouldn't know
edit: another idea, someone might have posted this before, but an in-game communications log of all Messages sent, received, or intercepted by your empire! (at least SE4 lets you copy it out to a text file with a right-click menu - most games wouldn't support that at all!
)
edit again: ah, one more thing - if there's not going to be a full-fledged Rules Description Language like in SSG, at least make the data files in CSV format - they might be harder to read, but they can be very easily imported into any spreadsheet or database program for advanced editing!
[ February 19, 2003, 04:00: Message edited by: Ed Kolis ]