Hmm, didn't there used to be some sort of epic conflict thing set up where whenever a sector in the metagame came under conflict, it was resolved by playing SE4? Never got involved in that, it seemed like there were too many rules and it was too hardcore-RP-style... besides, if you think a PBW game takes a long time - not to mention SE4 by Committee - it boggles the mind how long this sort of thing would take
are they still around, anyway? it's been what, 3 years since SE4 was released? or did everybody get bored and give up?
another idea for SE5: an option for weighted planet generation! It's not fair if everyone happens to pick oxygen rock except for the one player who picks hydrogen gas... he gets all his planets "for free" while the others are scrambling to grab as many oxygen rock worlds as they can before they're all taken! It would be nice if SE5 could weight the planet distribution at game setup to match the empires' preferred planets (provided an option was checked - you might want unbalanced setups for some other reason, like in the Star Trek mod where most races like rock planets but the Breen and 8472 don't, so presumably they have some disadvantage to balance their easy acquisition of worlds...)